Throughout his incredibly diverse career, this week’s guest Stephen Green has helped lead massive businesses and tiny congregations. Along the way, he’s learned some powerful truths about purpose, people, and the principles that unite us all.
Diversity, Respect and Lifelong Learning (ft. Stephen Green)
In a career spanning continents, industries, and sectors, human connection is the universal thread
OPENING QUOTE:
“All of this is, I think, a fundamental source of human connectivity and a fundamental basis for hope because the more we dialogue with each other, the more we interact with each other, the more we'll discover those things to be true.”
-Stephen Green
GUEST BIO:
Stephen Green began his career in the UK government’s overseas trade department before moving to McKinsey, then HSBC. At HSBC Stephen worked around the world in a variety of roles, including as CEO of the investment bank, then group CEO, and finally chairman of the HSBC group in 2006, by that point one of the biggest banks in the world. In 2010, Stephen joined the UK government as a trade minister. Today, he’s the chairman of the UK’s National History Museum and sits in the upper house of the UK parliament. Stephen is also an author and ordained minister in the Anglican church.
Links
CORE TOPICS + DETAILS:
[5:11] - Purpose Over Profit
Undoing the myth of the evil corporation
While there are certainly businesses motivated entirely by financial gain, that isn’t a characterization of most businesses. Many have a long history of culture and a sense of contributing to the common good, and that means paying attention to the role that business plays in the communities where it operates, the public policy of the time, and so forth. Beware of oversimplifying the view of major corporations.
[16:27] - The Moral Responsibility of Leaders
Speaking up, not staying silent
A critical requirement of holistic leadership is not keeping quiet when something is not right. This applies both in a moral and ethical sense as well as in terms of how things could be better to deliver more value. This is yet another example of how doing good naturally leads to doing well— purpose leads to improved performance.
[38:49] - The Beauty in Variety
Faith, philosophy, and business
As an ordained minister of the Anglican church, Stephen is careful not to allow his faith to take command in the workplace. But he does enjoy the way that it serves to open the door for discussions with colleagues from around the world, from different backgrounds, and with different faiths. That variety is not only exciting, it helps us become more well-rounded and open-minded individuals.
[43:57] - When People Care, Businesses Thrive
A cliche based in truth
It’s become a well-worn trope that the business that cares about its people will find the most success. But it’s only a cliche because it’s the truth— people have been shown to give up to 25% more effort just because their bosses show they genuinely care about them. Extra effort in interpersonal connection leads to better performance, which leads to real profits and other benefits.
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CREDITS:
Stephen Green:
All of this is, I think, a fundamental source of human connectivity and a fundamental basis for hope because the more we do dialogue with each other, the more we do interact with each other, the more we'll discover those things to be true.
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 guy to greater success. Together we'll 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 shot of insight and inspiration to help you get to the top.
Chris Roebuck:
Welcome to you and all of our Perspectives From The Top community, now in 42 countries across the world and growing. It's great to share the insights of such successful people with you to help you get to where you want to be. Today's guest is Stephen Green, who started his career in UK government's overseas trade department, moving to McKinsey before joining HSBC, the global bank. Here Stephen worked across the world in different roles, becoming CEO of the investment bank, then group CEO in 2003, finally chairman of the HSBC group in 2006, by then one of the biggest banks in the world with over 240,000 employees in over 100 countries. In 2010, he then joined UK government as a trade minister serving until 2013. And is now chairman of the UK's National Natural History Museum and sits in the upper house of the UK parliament, the House of Lords. Stephen is also an ordained minister in the Anglican church and an author.
Chris Roebuck:
Stephen welcome. One of the things our listeners love to hear about is when guests have had somebody in their career, a teacher, a mentor, a family member who's inspired them to achieve what they've achieved. Have you had somebody like that in your career?
Stephen Green:
It's a good question. Not one single one, no. Obviously, I can think of people I have admired and sought to emulate, people who have impressed me with a sense of their purpose and approach to life, both in family and not in the family. I mean, in my career, I can certainly think of, well, the former chairman of HSBC, who was not chairman when I joined it, but became chairman, I suppose, in the middle of my career at HSBC, who was a remarkable man by any standards. Willie Purves, to give him his name. But I could think of family members too, like my father, deeply influential on me.
Stephen Green:
And I remember, thinking about grandparents and they're close to me because I am one now, what I remember about the two grandparents that I knew well was they didn't often say very much. And they were very, very careful not to kind of issue guidance but when they did and it was rare, it sunk home and I never forgot. To this day, I can remember my grandfather saying one or two things that have proven to be kind of guidance for later in life. So not one single answer for you, but undoubtedly well chosen comments by people I care about have been very important.
Chris Roebuck:
And I think that's reflective of the way life goes, because as you go through life, it's those people who are around you at that point in time, be that family, when you are growing up, going to university, and then colleagues at work or professional mentors that you just happen to meet. That's really interesting. Now you started your career in government, in overseas development. Then you spent a significant time in the commercial world and then moved back into government, which is an interesting dynamic. I think the thing that is interesting is that one of those is driven by money, the other one is driven by public good, social benefit, however might want to measure that. But when you look back at those experiences, even though there is that difference, do you think that there are some commonalities that you have seen about what good leaders do in both? And what do you think they are?
Stephen Green:
Well, that's a large and important question.
Chris Roebuck:
That's why I-
Stephen Green:
But the first point that I would want to make in response is that the difference isn't as stark as all that.
Chris Roebuck:
I think it's a stereotype that people have.
Stephen Green:
Yeah. I mean, you can point to some examples of businesses that appear to be motivated entirely by financial gain, but that isn't actually a characterization of most businesses and it's not a characterization of a large bank like the one that employed me, where there was a long history and a culture of a sense of contributing to the common good by financing trade. So if you said to the owners of that business over time and the owners of many other businesses, "What is the purpose?" Fairly few of them will simply say maximization of profits.
Chris Roebuck:
Yeah.
Stephen Green:
At the very least, they're going to say maximization of profits over a sustainable longer term basis. And that will mean paying attention to the role that the business plays in the communities where it operates in the public policy of the time and so forth. So I think it's too binary a contrast. So that's my first point. And of course, on the other side of the scale, the role I played in government, the second time round, when I was minister of trade in the coalition government was about maximizing Britain's opportunities for global trade on a commercial basis. So it wasn't as if we had no eye to what made commercial sense for, in this case, for the country as a whole or for businesses generally, rather than what for one business in particular. So, like I say, I don't think the differences are as sharp as all that. Then is the question of what is the difference between working in a large private sector corporation, which is what I did. I have never had the experience of working in a small business or in a tech startup or anything like that.
Stephen Green:
I've worked in large, rather bureaucratic corporations are my experience of life. And I remember when I was in the trade job, eight, nine years ago, every now and then civil servants would who I enjoyed working with, by the way, what a high quality group of people they were in a vast majority of cases, would occasionally say to me in the corridor, "This must feel rather bureaucratic and so moving to," and I said, "Well, don't underestimate the extent to which large companies have got a fair amount of corporate bureaucracy, too." Yes, there are differences. It's not the same, but it's not as different as all that. So when it comes to your question about leadership, I'm not sure I think it is that different. There are some experiences you have to be prepared for, some things you have to do as a minister in a government, which are different from what you do as CEO of a company or head of a large division in a company.
Stephen Green:
So there are some differences. And one of the most obvious one, I think, is that everything you do is accountable to parliament and of course, to the media who pay very close attention, quite rightly, to what the government does both overall and in detail. So there's a much more intense public scrutiny of what you do day by day at senior levels in the government than is the case in business. Even that I wouldn't overstate. It isn't night and day, but nonetheless, the difference is rather sharp. And when I first started as a minister at the end of my year, I was expecting to retire. And instead of which, I ended up doing three years in the government as a minister, you take a little while to get used to it.
Chris Roebuck:
You alluded to the size and complexity of both government and large organizations. Now, obviously HSBC is one of the larger or largest banks in the world and the complexity within the operation of that organization, and maybe for our listeners to get a flavor of it, and please correct me if I'm wrong, we are talking about an organization with different business lines, such as retail, wealth management, investment banking, asset management, obviously a corporate center, what is 130 countries, 200,000 people. And even with the strap-line, "Local, yet global," it's how do you main maintain direction on a strategic level in something that large, but also allow that local freedom of action that responds to local requirements. And is that really about leadership and cascading decision making or is it about controls system?
Stephen Green:
Out of data about as to the numbers, but what you just said is-
Chris Roebuck:
Yeah, ballpark.
Stephen Green:
The thumbnail sketch sounds about right to me. And it shrunk since I left it in terms of headcount, but you're right. The problem is there not only for HSBC and for one or two other large pack, but of course also for many other.
Chris Roebuck:
Any large corporation that's global.
Stephen Green:
Correct. And you get many cultures, many different operating environments, many different regulatory environments, and a need to both coordinate so you've got a cohesive operation that can cohesively deliver on a business strategy with enough local flexibility or regional flexibility to be responsive to customers who are not the same all over the world. Yes, that's, in a sense, the big challenge. And what I think it means for leadership is, and for them I think the most important point, and this is true is for government, large, not for profit, so don't think there's anything different about this, but leadership is not a matter of what one or two people at the center do only. It is of course a matter of what one or two people at the center do, but it is also a requirement, a characteristic that you look for in colleagues all through the organization.
Stephen Green:
And I do remember saying to my colleagues at HSBC, and I remember saying the same thing in the context of the government, because when I was traveling a lot around the world and around this country, I remember saying, "Leadership is something that everybody has a responsibility for." In an important sense, wherever you sit on an organization chart, you have leadership responsibilities. You have leadership in the sense that you have power to influence both other colleagues and customers or whatever public you are there to serve and the wider community. You have a leadership in the sense that you have a power to influence for good or for other, in other ways. So one of the most important jobs that the leadership at the center has to do is to encourage that sense of leadership throughout the organization and to help both one's self and also all those around you engaged in this hopefully common endeavor to understand why leadership is the responsibility of all.
Chris Roebuck:
I think that's a really powerful point for our listeners. I suppose there's always a perception that true leaders are the people in the boardroom, and I'm only a first line manager and therefore I'm not so much of a leader. But if the risk element is that if somebody in the boardroom makes a mistake, the consequences are going to be significantly greater perhaps than a first line manager, but in terms of your point about the power to influence-
Stephen Green:
Not sure about that one.
Chris Roebuck:
Yeah, you've been there. But in terms of the power to influence, I think that for our sort of junior leaders listening, the power that you have to influence people in their lives, even at your level, is significant.
Stephen Green:
Yeah. Clearly, clearly. If you're in the position, which I found myself in where you have a power of influence in a lot of situations over a lot of people in the way they do their work, yes, of course. And with that goes the risk of stating, very important and obvious, with that goes a huge responsibility to seek to do that well to the best of your ability clearly, but I don't want to let go of that point, that everybody has leadership responsibilities, that we're all engaged in a common endeavor.
Stephen Green:
I mean, in my own case, I think I've had, what you might call, a sort of serendipitous career in the sense that I didn't start out with a plan that would've taken me to the different places and to the different roles that I've found myself in over the last 40 some... More than that, now 50 years. I didn't start out with a clear plan. I think I can detect a common thread in it, which is that from the very first, from, I remember this at school and then at university, wanting to be involved in countries that would develop, economically and socially developing.
Chris Roebuck:
Yeah.
Stephen Green:
And the reason why I started my career in the civil service is because I specifically wanted to work in what is now the Department for International Development. Well, it's no longer that. It's now part of the Foreign Office, but was then I think called Overseas Development Administration and I actually wanted to work in that, and that's what I joined the civil service for. And going from that to, I then went to McKinsey and worked on projects in places like Saudi Arabia. And I then went to HSBC whose core business then, and actually still now, was a business that involved financing the businesses that contributed to the development of countries for the most part then in Southeast Asia, but now rather more broadly than that.
Chris Roebuck:
Yeah, the McKinsey experience you have in common with somebody else we interviewed earlier in the series, a certain Peter Wuffli, who actually ran another financial services institution. And it's interesting from my perspective, having worked some time with both of you, but one of the interesting things he mentioned about McKinsey was the ethos that there is this obligation to dissent if you see there is a way that something could be done better. And that there is that ethos that you are prepared to criticize and constantly update, and that's part of the job and keeping quiet isn't. And I think that's a critical thing in terms of leadership.
Stephen Green:
Yes, I agree. And it's a critical requirement of leadership, of holistic, of good person leadership. In life more generally, not keeping quiet when something is not right, is one of my most basic responsibilities, both in a moral sense and in a sense of how things can be done better to deliver more value. So yes, yes, I think that. I mean, McKinsey of course is, certainly since I was there, I'm a good deal older than Peter, but certainly since I was there, has undergone a huge change as well. When I was there, the partners all knew each other, because there were only a few hundred of them and the London office was, I think I'm right in saying, somewhere between 10 and 20 times smaller than it now is.
Chris Roebuck:
Wow.
Stephen Green:
So the challenge of managing culture as you get bigger is one that a famous management consultant faced, banks have faced, large corporates in the real economy have faced. And as we know too, some of the large nonprofits have faced.
Chris Roebuck:
Then the next part of your journey, which I think was the fascinating part and you've alluded to, is that a revelation being of a trade minister, that there are organizations other than large corporations that may be run by just one or two people who are on exactly that journey that you are talking about, the founder, entrepreneur moving into the small and medium sized and scale. Give us some insight into some of the interesting things you experienced and saw when you were trade minister, both in UK and supporting those organizations grow and develop across the world.
Stephen Green:
Well, I should say I hugely enjoyed my time. I said upfront I would not do it for longer than three years. And I did it for almost exactly three years and there were specific reasons for that. And I'm very glad I did kind of set a timetable so that everybody understood that I was there for a period of time. I hugely enjoyed it. Visiting businesses, both around this country and in different contexts around the world was always exciting, exhilarating. You always learn new things. And I must have seen businesses in every sector in every, in every size and I could write the book, I'm not going to, but I could write the book of wonderful stories of companies that had come from nowhere and have got all the energy to take the world on and were going after it in the gutsiest way you would want.
Stephen Green:
And I'm afraid others where there was evidence of coasting, of the quiet life, of too easy tendency to head off to the golf course on a Friday and so on. All of this, of course, is long before we got to the pandemic and changed modes of working, let me hastily add. So yes, I did encounter wonderful examples of people who had created businesses out of nothing because they'd spotted an opportunity and because they got in their bones or in their family background or whatever it is that sense of, "I can go out and do something here," and they were creating jobs and they were growing. And I loved quoting a study which had been done before I got there which showed that businesses that got into the export, small businesses that got into the export markets grew faster, created more jobs, were more profitable, and lasted longer than those that didn't. And I saw almost every day evidence of that point.
Chris Roebuck:
The fascinating thing is I think you mentioned that there are people who are perhaps natural entrepreneurs, which poses the wider question. And I think an element of that is attitude to risk. If you have risk aversion, you are more or less likely rather to become a founder. But the mindset question I find really interesting. So is there a group of people who are natural entrepreneurs? And is there a group of people who are corporate executives and that there's not much crossover between the two and they are different mindsets or different attitudes, however you put it? Or do people move between the two? Because we've seen entrepreneurs and I won't mention any names of certain cab companies for examples who grew globally, who might have been okay setting the business up, but couldn't handle the organization when it became global.
Stephen Green:
Yeah. I mean, I think this is a subject for PhD theses. The classic entrepreneur who has got a vision and got the drive and got the creativity and got the personal charisma to take people with them, it's very rare that it's a single person. It's more normally one person inspiring a small group of people to work together on the vision, so often is also not the person who's got any interest in process and risk management and all of the other tools which are unavoidable in a larger business. And that's one classic syndrome. Another one of course, is the generational change, when you move from the founder to the next generation. I don't want to name names, but one wonderful company that I saw in my time as trade minister where the founders were two people from South Asia, from the subcontinent, and they were a pair of brothers, and one was the natural product developer and backroom person.
Stephen Green:
And the other was the natural sales and marketing figure. Just by character, you could tell which one was going to do which of those two roles. And the head of the sales and marketing side, the one who led that, from a small boy had been going around the Saturday markets in the town where they'd grown up, looking for deals and so on. This was just in his bloodstream. And then his son who was by that time in his thirties, I guess, had been to business school. He had got all the same drive, but of course, A, the company they had created was by that time quite sizeable, and B you've got in the next generation somebody who's got all of that formal knowledge that comes from having been to one of the best business schools.
Stephen Green:
So that transition was a fascinating one to watch and it would be fascinating to see how that plays out over the longer term. So, yes, you've got this contrast between the visionary who starts something out, sometimes alone, but more often in a small coterie of people and the more successful it is, the more they need to grapple with some more conventional textbook business kinds of issues.
Chris Roebuck:
No, no, I think it's really interesting, your comment, because on Monday, we have an interview coming out with a guy called Lak Ananth, who is the chief executive of an investment vehicle that Siemens has, looking for founders and entrepreneurs in the tech space across the world. I said, "Well, who ends up being the best founder and scaling?" And he said, "The ones that come out best are often the ones who didn't know that they were entrepreneurs and founders, went into the corporate world, tolerated it for five years, couldn't take it anymore, and went out and became a founder. But because they were in the corporate world and had a basic knowledge of what should be happening to grow in a structured way and could benchmark quality in terms of people, process, and action, when they come to scale, they can handle it much more than the entrepreneur who's never been in that world."
Stephen Green:
Yeah. That has the ring of truth to me. The other thing of course about a successful entrepreneurial leader is that they need to be the kind of people who can attract extremely able people to work with them.
Chris Roebuck:
Yes.
Stephen Green:
And they need to know about delegation. I mean, it is often not the case that founders are particularly good at delegation, or not instinctively good at delegation, but it is actually something you need to do and do well. It's often said you need to be able to delegate to remain sane. Well, that's not enough. You need to be able to delegate on the basis that you have chosen people to whom delegation makes sense, for whom the delegation makes sense, people you've got confidence in, people who you are not afraid to say are better than you in some aspects.
Chris Roebuck:
Stephen, you have beautifully picked up one of Lak's key points, which is the main problem he has helping organizations like that scale is when the entrepreneur is not capable of delegating effectively to the technical experts that have been brought in to help them scale. So effectively, you in your position of trade minister were effectively seeing the same sort of scenario then?
Stephen Green:
Well, yes, indeed. And as I say, I saw this, I made it my business to... I traveled a lot around the world. I did 58 countries in three years or something, but I also traveled around this country. I made it my business to be in all three of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland and in every English administrative region, nine of them, at least twice a year. And each time I did, the team would put together a program for a day or two. Often it would be a speech to a local chamber of commerce and a visit to a handful of companies and something like that and so forth. And that's where I got all of that vivid insight into the truth of some of the things we've just been saying. And like I said, you could see the real success stories and you could see the other kind, the underwhelmers, those that just weren't achieving all that they could.
Chris Roebuck:
Yeah. Now you spend much of your time in the House of Lords. For the non-UK listeners, that's the upper house of the British parliament. You are chairman of Asia House, which builds business links between UK and Asia. And you are the chairman of the trustees of the Natural History Museum. Again for non-UK listeners, that's the UK's national natural History Museum, 200 years old research establishment with a global reputation. It's the country's legacy for the future. And to give listeners a flavor, it's 50% government funded, but you have to find 50% yourself with revenue generating activities. Tell us, because that's a really interesting challenge. It's not just a dry museum, it's a living, developing legacy entity business. How do you make it work, Stephen?
Stephen Green:
First of all, I love it. I've got one more year to do and I'm coming down towards the end of my term. I'd have done it for nine years. And in fact, just yesterday or Monday rather, we announced the appointment of my successor of this chair, who will take up the role in the latter part of the 2022 or early '23. So Patrick Vallance, to give him his name, who is presently, the government's chief scientific officer. So we're extremely delighted by that. For my money, the Natural History Museum is not merely fascinating for some of the reasons you just spelled out, but also because its subject matter has never been more important than it now is. It deals in environmental connectivity. It seeks to understand the challenges to the environment from an increasingly urbanized planet and for all the obvious reasons our voice needs to be heard more and more clearly in the whole climate change, environmental degradation debates and in the corridors of government as government seek to respond to the climate challenge and work out what it means to be a carbon neutral economy.
Stephen Green:
So it's absolutely critical as well as fascinating. It is by some measures, the largest Natural History Museum in the world. I mean, by other measures, it's second to the Smithsonian, so depends a bit what you measure, but it is one of the three or four most important natural history entities on the planet. And like you said, it's got a large scientific research base. So the challenges are many and varied. One is ensuring that the science is leading edge and has real global authority, making sure therefore that we're able to compete in the market for scientific talent. And one of the things about us is that our, as it were, competition in that respect is not so much the other big cultural museums of London as it is the universities. And so engagement with the universities is a pretty important dimension of all this.
Stephen Green:
You are dealing in the Natural History Museum with people who in the vast majority of cases love their jobs passionately, believe passionately in what they're doing, and it's almost as if they're being paid to do their hobby, although they put it in a much more significant way than that. That gives it an extraordinary atmosphere I believe. It's a museum which has a beautiful building in Knightsbridge that many people will know well. It has, in normal times pre the pandemic, an enormous number of people visiting it.
Stephen Green:
At its peak, it was over 5 million. Of course, it's not that at the moment. I'm hoping that we will get back up to that in the next two to three years. And I can't tell you the number of times when I've spoken to friends of mine or business colleagues and acquaintances of mine, and they've said, "Oh, I took my grandson or granddaughter there just recently and they loved it." And indeed of course it is the, what's the word? It's the nurturing place for young people getting interested in the natural environment. And I can't think of a more important role for it to be playing now than that.
Chris Roebuck:
I agree, it's a national institution. But to your point, if you think about that nurturing element, if you think about the number of children who have gone through that institution to see what's in there in the last 200 years and have then been inspired to become scientists, the contribution that the institution has made by virtue of that influencing impact is colossal.
Stephen Green:
And I ended up there as chair of the board, not by accident. I don't mean that, but not on a planned basis. It wasn't something that I aspired to be. I was stepping down from the trade role that I mentioned. I remember coming across the then the Secretary of State for Culture, who's the overseeing government body for all of the big London institutions, cultural institutions. And they said to me, "Well, what are you planning to do?" And I said, "Well, one of the things I want to do is in the cultural domain." And they said, "Well, have you thought about the chairmanship of the Natural History Museum because that's coming up? It's not in a gift. It's a public process of competition and appointment." So it meant that I found myself applying for a job for the first time, for about 40 years.
Stephen Green:
But I talked to a few people and I did apply, and I'm very fortunate to have been given the opportunity. It is both similar and different to other things. It's quite a large organization. I mean, not like the bank and not like government, but nonetheless it employs a thousand people so the processes matter, the way in which we approach development of colleagues matters. As you mentioned, we have to find a lot of our own revenue from commercial undertakings. And so we care about our online business, our catering business, and so forth. So it's quite many sided.
Stephen Green:
And yet at the end of the day, it's not that different. At the end of the day as a board and as a senior management, it's got a strategy it needed to have, an articulated strategy. We worked on that until we promulgated it two or three years ago. And then you have an executive team who has to see it through both in terms of the science side, the normal operations, the front of house business, and its public presentation. So nothing in that sentence would be different from what you'd be saying in the context of a bank or in terms of a government department.
Chris Roebuck:
And like a commercial organization, to be honest, it needs to get money in to be able to do what it needs to do.
Stephen Green:
Yeah. And you need to figure out where you want to invest. We have quite an investment budget. We are all the time looking for new scientific investments. We need gallery refurbishment for the front of house and so on. As you say, the same sorts of things that a business leader has to be asking themselves.
Chris Roebuck:
And also your role in Asia House, give us a little bit of a flavor for that, given the sort of dynamic between the West and Asia and China and how you see that developing?
Stephen Green:
Well, Asia House, I also enjoy. It's a small entity who employs less than two dozen people. As you mentioned, it's a business supported center which convenes people who have, effectively, a business interest in Asian connectivity. I found myself in the chair of that obviously, because of my Asian experience. I lived in Hong Kong for how many years, traveled in throughout Asia a lot, have up until the pandemic, continued to travel a lot in Asia. I have always enjoyed my time in China. I have not been there now for two years. And of course, the nature of the relationship between China and the West has got more complicated in recent years, but on the principle which I very strongly hold engagement is key, not least because China is what it is, the world's second largest economy and one of the two global superpowers on the world stage for the rest of this century.
Stephen Green:
It is important whether you're in business or in public policy or in cultural activities of one sort or another to engage with China. I mean, as the Natural History Museum, we have links with Chinese natural history ventures. We have had close conversations over the environmental cop that's coming up and so on. So on any dimension, the engagement with Asia is I think profoundly important for all people in this country. And that's when I was asked to take the chair of Asia House, I said, "Absolutely yes, delighted. On it."
Chris Roebuck:
It's a fascinating area. One thing that many people might not know about you, which links into, I suppose, all the roles you've had is that for a number of years you've been a minister in the Church of England. How does that role and its underlying beliefs sort of contribute to the way you have worked as a leader? That's just that simple age old principle, treat other people as you would wish to be treated. How do you think that applies in modern day business? And whether it actually can make organizations more successful?
Stephen Green:
As you say, I've been an ordained minister in the Church of England or in fact in the Anglican church, because part of that all of time was in Hong Kong, which is not part of the Church of England.
Chris Roebuck:
Oh wow. So you were ordained in Hong Kong?
Stephen Green:
Yes, I was. And so for, actually what is it now, more than 30 years, I've been functioning in that role and it's most of the time helping out at your local church, which is what I do where I live here in London. I suppose one important thing to say about what it does not mean is it does not mean that you have got any authority or license to use your position in your workplace as a sort of pulpit, if you will.
Chris Roebuck:
Yep.
Stephen Green:
Although I do not believe it's kind of compartmentalized into one corner of life without affecting the other part of life, how could I believe that? I also don't accept that it's right to use a position of authority or on any role at all really to, as it were, pontificate in a business context. So that's putting the point negatively. Putting the point positively, one of the most powerful facts of the modern age is that in any environment you find yourself and certainly in business and certainly in government, you are working with colleagues from all over the place, from every conceivable culture, every conceivable faith commitment, where many people say that's no faith and so there's a rich variety, a huge variety. And for me, that variety is itself exciting. If people want to talk about it, I love listening because you learn so much. And indeed I've done some work in a sort of cross-cultural comparative context with philosophers and theologians, which I just enjoy enormously. And now I've got to a stage in life where I've got a bit of leisure to do that.
Chris Roebuck:
You can do it.
Stephen Green:
Yeah. But the serious point is that we live in a multicultural world, we live in a connected world. It brings its own challenges, of course, but I wouldn't for a second want to go back to the sort of monochrome experience of, let's say, 50 to a hundred years ago. This is so much more diverse and lively and interesting. It showed itself in the bank, which as you said, was in a hundred and something countries. And you could imagine every conceivable background showed itself in government in the same way, showed itself in the Natural History Museum. This is normal life experience of this day and age. What you also want to believe, and you said it, is that there are some common principles about how you treat other people.
Chris Roebuck:
Yes.
Stephen Green:
I mean, to me, it is interesting that in the Christian gospels and in Confucius, you can find the same so-called golden rule quote, indeed. It's also in the Hebrew Bible. It's all over the place. I think everybody recognizes that that's a principle of interaction with other people, treat others as you would wish to be treated by them, see the best in others and not their worst, hope to be judged by your best and not by your worst, just as you would judge others by their best and not by their worst, and so on and so forth. All of this is I think a fundamental source of human connectivity and a fundamental basis for hope because the more we do dialogue with each other, the more we do interact with each other, the more we'll discover those things to be true.
Chris Roebuck:
What I think is really powerful though, is that the comments you've just made about what this means in terms of people's best, people's worst, treating people as you would wish to be treated, all of those things are often quoted as the sort of classic motherhood and apple pie, we should be nice to each other stuff. But certainly my work when speaking around the world, one of the things I always do is I always ask the leaders I'm speaking to what did the best boss they ever had do on a day-to-day basis that made that individual so special to them and that's why they gave everything to that particular boss. And the things that you mentioned, that people confuse as this, "Oh, it's the sort of apple pie and motherhood stuff," are things that people say their best boss did that inspired them. So those actions do, I think, make a real day-to-day impact on people at work.
Stephen Green:
The symbolism of acts you take in a leadership capacity, and again, I want to remake the point I made earlier, that leadership is not only about the people in the center. It's also about anybody engaged in a common enterprise. The symbolism of specific actions, which may seem unimportant, but are watched by others is, for better or for worse, powerful. And I suppose one of the points, if you are in a senior and central position means you need to be conscious that others will look at you for an example. And it may be a good example. It will sometimes be the bad example. "Look at that guy and don't do what he does." Or worse still, "Look at that guy and the things he does that obviously pay off for him. Let's emulate them." So you're actually having an influence for bad. No, the symbolism of what you do and what you say matters powerfully.
Chris Roebuck:
What is really interesting is that just the simple act, on that list, one of the things that always comes up is, "They showed they cared about me as a person." And everybody says, "Oh, that's very fluffy." But the evidence from the research studies is that if leaders show their people they genuinely care, those people can give up to 25% more effort just because their bosses show they care about them. So it's not just this soft, fluffy stuff. Extra effort means better performance equals more money.
Stephen Green:
Yeah. Well, indeed so. And you see I don't think this is a matter of saying, "Oh, well, that's a bit of a cliche," or, "It's motherhood and apple pie." The fact is that things become motherhood and apple pie or they become cliches because they're true. And I think this is, I mean, a powerful example of it. Why do people say this is a bit of a cliche? It's all a bit kind of wooly and fluffy or self-evident. Answer is because it's important and it's important because it's important. It's not important because it leads to people to be 25% more productive, by the way. It's important because it's important. It important because it's treating human beings as human beings. It is, of course, often easier to say that than to live it out. And anybody sooner or later will find themselves in uncomfortable dilemmas where exactly what that means for what you say and do next may not be clear. The fact that there are difficulties that we can all find ourselves in sometimes does not mean that you abandon the principle. On the contrary, you are reminded of the importance of the principle.
Chris Roebuck:
And in the end, in organizations that I've worked in over my career, in particular, the military it's, that creating a "We not me" ethos, where actually everybody is working on that principle of treat others as you would wish to be treated. So Stephen, what is the next project? What are you going to do next? Another book perhaps?
Stephen Green:
Well, another book not in the near term. Although what I am doing, which I'm really enjoying and which is making more progress than I thought that it might necessarily when I started out, is working with a group of academic philosophers in fact, I've alluded to this a few minutes ago, to look at the way in which the different cultural traditions of the world tends to think about some of the underlying questions about what is important to us all as human beings. One of them being this response. What is the nature of human nature and what is our relationship to each other, those kinds of questions. And so we've been looking at what is the tradition in China, in Japan, in the Muslim world, in the Indian world, in the European context, in Africa, what have people had to say about those kinds of questions down the ages?
Stephen Green:
And we're trying, a little bit systematically, to think about these questions and I tell you, it's endless fun. I like to think that at the end of the day, we'll get to a book and it's a book which will be a collection of essays done by the different people. So it's not my book. I've got the luxury of having a bit of time to be able to do that now. I couldn't have done it 10 years ago, 20 years ago, absolutely couldn't have. But I'm enjoying that and I like to think it'll be a useful contribution to a dialogue with which needs to take place in an increasingly globalized world.
Chris Roebuck:
I think it's absolutely fascinating. Finally, one thing you think every leader should do more of to be a better leader or colleague, do more of to be a better colleague?
Stephen Green:
I mean, spend time with people who are part of your organization who you would normally come in contact with is one obvious thing. But in a sense, the answer will differ between different people because people are not all the same. Some people have great gifts in certain directions, in the way they think about businesses and other kinds of issues or challenges, some will be better at the strategizing, some are better at the personal interaction. So I think the answer is that it probably depends.
Chris Roebuck:
And it will, in that sense, then just be as good as you can at what you're good at and get better at what you are not necessarily as good at.
Stephen Green:
Yeah. I mean, the other way of putting this is be ready to be a lifetime learner.
Chris Roebuck:
Which is a brilliant point. Absolutely brilliant point. Absolutely.
Stephen Green:
You're never too old to learn new things. You're never too old to correct your own mistakes I think. You're never too old to be past redemption. You're never too old to recognize where you could have done things better or differently and that might be better in an efficiency sense or better in a moral sense. So in one sense, always be your own sternest critic and be a lifetime learner.
Chris Roebuck:
Stephen, that is so good. And how can people learn more about what you are doing, Natural History Museum, Asia House, and you?
Stephen Green:
Well, I'm not sure. I'd rather they learn more about Asia House and about Natural History Museum than they do about me.
Chris Roebuck:
Fair enough.
Stephen Green:
And they can learn about both of those by going to their websites. And clearly other things I do in the House of Lords, that's all on the-
Chris Roebuck:
It's on House of Lords website, et cetera. And for all our listeners around the world, I would say having been there many times, if you haven't been to the Natural History Museum in London, I don't care where you live in the world, you need to go. Stephen, thank you so much. That was absolutely excellent.
Stephen Green:
I enjoyed it. Thank you very much. Cheers.
Chris Roebuck:
Cheers.
Stephen Green:
Thank you.
Chris Roebuck:
We tend to think of organizations as being homogenous, reference back to our personal experience of that organization. But in the case of organizations like HSBC, what we see is only a very small part of the totality of a very diverse organization. It's a bit like an iceberg with 90% or even more hidden. In his time with HSBC, Stephen worked with and led the diversity of different businesses, different roles, different cultures, different nationalities in the bank. He then interestingly experienced the same in his role as a trade minister, dealing with growing organizations of vastly different types. Both build into Stephen's view of the importance of diversity, of understanding other people, of treating others as you would wish to be treated, and of lifelong learning.
Chris Roebuck:
Now whilst these don't appear to be specific actions, everybody listening can ask themselves the simple question, "What am I doing about developing my diversity of thought, my diversity of network?" And if a leader, "Building diversity around me? What am I doing about proactively understanding other people, treating others as I would wish to be treated? What am I doing about constantly learning to grow and develop to be my best self?" Now I'd strongly encourage all of you listening just to ask those simple questions of yourself and think about how you can do better in all of these over the next weeks and months. They will help you get to where you want to be by encouraging others to help and support you in the future.
Chris Roebuck:
Now don't forget that in a week, I will give you a more in depth view of the key takeaways from Stephen's interview, my insights, and three ideas for actions in my Reflections On The Top. If you've used any of the insights you've got from previous Perspectives From The Top guests and they've helped you, send me your success stories. I would really love to hear them. Also don't forget to sign up on the website so you don't miss any of the great future guests over the next year.
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.