Welcome to this bonus mini episode of Trials and Errors. For those of you who are new to the series, Marios and I have been hosting some live webinars over the past year with senior leaders from across the higher education advancement space, and we've been talking about all things career mishaps, mistakes, things that have gone wrong, and what we've learned from them. But to keep the conversation going in between episodes, we're doing some short mini series. So to introduce myself, I am Hannah Fox, I am the Director of Alumni, Community, Careers and Network Development at Regents University London. And hi, I'm Marios Delorzan, I'm Head of Alumni Engagement at the Sutton Trust. I'm also on the faculty for the Case Alumni Relations Institute. And today we're joined by Martin, who's also on the Marketing and Comms Institute, which is one of the case's kind of mini conferences. So Martin, I'll pass to you to introduce yourself and welcome. Thank you both, real pleasure to be with you today. So I'm in week five, as we record this, of a new role as Director of External Relations at University of Leicester. And before that, I spent about four and a half years in a very similar role, same role really, at Loughborough University. And before that, sort of moved around different institutions in the sector, spent a little bit of time outside the sector, but still within education at the British Council, and also spent some time on the commercial side. But again, within HE, working for IDP Education, the Student Recruitment Agency. So hopefully, some can bring some diverse experience to the conversation as well. Definitely. Thanks, Martin. And yeah, five weeks in, a good time to be reflecting on things to not doing this job. So yeah, thank you for the introduction, Hannah, I'll pass back to you. Amazing. I mean, Martin, dive straight in, tell us all about a time where something did not go according to plan. Yeah, thank you. And it's interesting, I think part of it, we'll talk maybe about the stigma of making mistakes and failure as well, but you often tend to focus on the things that haven't gone well, rather than what has gone well. And so when I was asked to think of one example, I really struggled, not because I don't make mistakes, quite the opposite, I probably have a half a dozen I could have talked to you about. The one I wanted to talk about, though, because it's probably the one that's lasted with me the longest, it's almost 15 years ago now. And where I learned the most was being part of a restructure team. So not leading individual restructure, but being part of a sort of wider leadership team that was leading on, you know, what we call it business transformation, but it was a big organisational restructure of quite a large organisation, I won't name it. But I think the first thing I would say is that I probably cared too much. I think that's the first thing to say, I probably needed to depersonalise it a bit more. I was still quite early in my leadership career. And I was still sort of fixated on people that I managed liking me and being their friend. And I've since learned that while that's okay, particularly when you have to have difficult conversations, manage performance, or in this case, manage quite a big restructure and improvement programme, where, you know, people did lose their jobs, where people, you know, did have to make a case for certain members of my team. But also, and this is without going off on too much of a tangent, I think sometimes we use restructures in any industry, but particularly HE, we use restructures as a way of managing performance, when really, we should have managed performance earlier in the process as well, if that makes sense. So the structure itself is not always the panacea, sometimes it's about, you know, managing the people you've got in the right way and having difficult conversations. So for me, I think definitely, I got far too invested. And I think in that in itself, sometimes, you know, if you'd be on the other side, the receiving end of a restructure that's not managed well, often the criticism is the people managing it are not accessible enough, they're not invested enough, you don't get a feeling they're compassionate and care and empathetic. I think in this case, I was too much the other way, I was I was really in it, I was feeling the pain with my team. But that did mean then that there were times when maybe I, I should have stepped back, made more of an objective decision, I probably built up their expectations and hopes too much as well, because it was quite a difficult, painful restructure. And I probably told them too much of what I think they wanted to hear rather than just as it was. But I was, and it was hard to believe I was a lot younger than 15 years ago, believe it or not. So it was quite early on in my career. But that's, that's, that's the example that's really stayed with me. And it's particularly pertinent now where we find ourselves in higher education, all the various financial challenges we have. Martin, how do you find that balance? Because I think that is something particularly new leaders probably struggle with quite a lot is, you know, if you if you come from, you know, people being your peers, and then suddenly you're their leader, or even if you're coming into a new team, as a new leader, you haven't got that experience of that kind of emotional, taking that step back, how did you find that balance? Or, you know, what is your advice around that? Because I think that is such a hard thing to do, finding the balance between the two. Yeah, it is, I don't pretend to know the exact answer or solution, I find that actually addressing the elephant in the room. And it's something and it's not a plug for Leicester, but Leicester do some really good leadership training about being quite deliberate, and sort of, in terms of how you have those very sort of deliberate and planned and how you use language. And that sounds a bit obvious. But I think just just saying to people, like, you know, I know, my role has changed, or I know, this is difficult, or we're going to have this conversation, my intention is this, or even saying things like, I've been having some coaching training, I want to use some of those techniques in this conversation, it might seem a bit weird, it might seem a bit stilted, I think, if you sort of tee it up in that way, you're very transparent, rather than maybe trying, I mean, leadership is an act, isn't it? We're all acting, it's all a bit of a persona. And I think people do have rightly or wrongly, this expectation of leaders that we have to be strong, and we can't show weakness, and we can't be vulnerable. And it's all BS, isn't it? It's terribly, you know, you want leaders to be a bit vulnerable. But there's getting that balance right between somebody being vulnerable, and transparent, but still being, you know, a leader that can, you know, make a decision, I think the key thing is making decisions, making, you know, consulting, being collaborative, having shared responsibility, but not being afraid, particularly when things are moving quite quickly to make a decision. Either way, you know, even sometimes not having all the information, but being decisive, because we do have to make decisions. I think also just being consistent and authentic. And just, you know, if you're going to do, if you say you're going to do something, do it, live the values. You know, it's no good coming, I'm coming into a new role now, if I say to my team here, I want to be accessible, come and talk to me, and my door's always closed, and they can't get any time with me, or I, you know, I make excuses, then obviously, I'm not just, you know, things like that can make a real difference. So I think it's about coming back to your question, taking control, thinking really about the language you're using, you know, preparing, I think, if you know, it's gonna be a difficult conversation, you know, not reading from a script, but just writing out in advance what you think you're going to say, and how that person might react. But also, as well, just depersonalizing it as much as possible. And, you know, trying to focus on, you know, why, not so much on the individual, but why things are happening, why change is necessary. And I think that doesn't mean, though, that you get a free pass. If you have to address poor performance, you should do. I think in the current climate, in particular, there are so many things outside our control in HE, you know, the American election, what's happening in China, geopolitics, Brexit still, as well as, you know, government policy in the UK. I think, you know, you can have those conversations in a way which isn't so personal, because we are hostages to fortune, to some extent, because of all that uncertainty and turbulence externally. Thanks so much, Martin, and for being so honest. Yeah, I really appreciate it. And, yeah, those suggestions are very relatable. And can I ask, then, you know, you seem very reflective now, and we appreciate you sharing the example from quite a while back, 15 years ago, it's going back some time. How soon did you have these reflections that that period of time could have been handled differently? And, you know, is that something you've come to gradually? Is that anything you've perhaps got feedback from your own management at the time? Or is that just something that, you know, now with 15 years hindsight, and being a much more experienced leader, you can reflect on? That's a really good question. So I think, I think I realised it in the moment at times, and some of that was because of the feedback I was getting then, particularly from staff that were affected, you know, they were like, oh, well, you told me this was going to happen, and it didn't, and this happened, and it was worse than I thought, and, you know, etc, etc. And, and then reflecting with my peers at the time as well, and getting emotional support. You know, I think there's various sort of research and studies and things that say, you know, high performing teams, and high performing organisations are those where people can ask for help, and be vulnerable and also give help. Well, do you know what I mean, being sociable and being socially supportive, and I was lucky to have around me then other peers, other leaders who are more experienced than me, but they were going through it as well, and some of them for the first time, and because it was quite a painful restructure, we were on the same boat. So I think that was helpful. I think, since then, and I think this is the important thing about embedding what you learn, I've made the same mistakes again, but I think I recognise them quicker now. And I recognise my behaviours in the moment, when I'm making that mistake, you know, when I'm slipping back into behaviours, which may maybe aren't helpful, and making decisions based on emotion rather than the facts, and what's good for the organisation are good for the individual. So I guess the reassuring thing for me, and everybody, you know, you never stop learning. But now I'm aware of that, I'm aware of that, and the sort of the flags and the warning signs. And since then, I've had to work on similar, you know, this seems to be the way now with restructures and organisational transformation and HE is just one, you know, it is par for the course. So I think it does just come with time. A final point, just to mention, though, I think I've been quite lucky in that I've been within teams and organisations where the senior leader has, above me, has, you know, asked us to, and paid for 360 feedback. So not just a standard as part of maybe a PDR, where you can, you know, report back on your line manager and vice versa, but then sort of formalised 360 feedback as part of coaching exercises. And that's been really helpful, actually, because a lot of my peers have sort of said, about me in this kind of context, you know, don't worry so much about what people think of you, you know, you are personable, you are compassionate, people aren't going to hold it against you if and when you have to have difficult conversations. I think that's part of the issue is a lot of us feel like, you know, we want people to like us. And while that's nice, for me, it's, it is, it's a cliche, but it's more about people don't have to like me, they have to respect me. And I think that's, once I've got over that, that natural desire to be liked, and I'm a people pleaser as well. But it's also coming back to something, you know, we might, we might talk about later, which is, you know, under the radical candor model, this sort of thing about ruinous empathy, where you tell people what they want to hear, just to make them feel good in the moment, and sugarcoat the feedback, when actually, you should just be straight with people, because in the longer term, this medium longer term, they will thank you for that, and you get a better result anyway. It's funny, Martin, that you say about the liking versus respecting, because when I first took on a leadership role, I had a mentor, and she asked me that question. She was a great mentor, she asked me the question, would you rather be really well liked, but known for not being great at your job, or really well respected, but but not hugely liked, and at the time in my new leadership role, I would much rather be liked. And she was horrified. One of the questions I had, Martin, was around decision making. Because you talk a lot about, you know, a good leader makes those decisions. And I think a large part of why, I mean, why I host this series, and why Mary Rose and I have probably come together on this, is around the fact that often failing, or, you know, the fear of failing will hinder those decisions, and make decisions hard. So I wondered if you had advice on, for particularly anybody new to leadership, or new to roles, really just people making decisions all the time, around how to approach decision making and be consistent with it. Yeah, that's such a good question. So I'm, whenever I talk about this book, people always think I'm working on commission, because I'm not, I'm not a bookseller. But the book I would recommend to anybody in this space is Creativity Inc, by Ed Catmull. And it's about Pixar. So Ed Catmull was, I think, the first CEO of Pixar, before Steve Jobs came on the scene. And I won't go into the book, I could talk about it all day, I get very passionate about it. But he wasn't an artist, he wasn't a creative person. He was, I think, a physicist slash computer scientist, but he grew up during the golden age of Disney. So Snow White, Cinderella, Dumbo, The Jungle Book. So he loved cartoons, and he started to tinker around in the 70s with computer generated animation. But he was not an artist or a designer, and he would say I'm not a creative person. But he, he was, he was, he had a team in Pixar of incredibly gifted creative people. And, and he had the mantra, which was, you know, protecting the new, protecting, you know, allowing people to be comfortable with uncertainty. And I think the phrase he used was clearing a path to allow the creative people to do their best work, right. So he was very inclusive. But he also, coming back to your question, he had a massive respect for data, and everybody at Pixar has a respect for data. And that data could be numbers in the spreadsheet, but very often it's, it's qualitative, it's audience, it's test audience responses, it's that kind of thing, it's surveys and that kind of thing. So I think it's about, and it sounds, could be talking about soft cultural things, about compassion and vulnerability and trust, and that's all really important. But it's not just being creative for the sake of it, we've got to have a clear objective and output. And we've got to measure, did we hit what we meant to achieve with that, you know, creative output, you know, what the success looked like, all those kinds of things. And that's where the data comes in. So I think having a really strong data team, qualitative team, market insights team, making them feel part of that, so they see where their, their role is in the creative journey, but also encouraging others to work with that team and use those insights and develop their own, you know, qualitative, quantitative skills, gives people confidence, because then you understand that your audience is better. And you can make these decisions, even if they seem like quite scary decisions, and other people disagree with you, but you can say, well, I've got the data, you know, no, you shouldn't follow that data blindly, but it does allow you to make those decisions where you have to make it, you don't know everything, but you've got enough data, you've benchmarked, you've listened to your audiences, you can make the best informed decision you can make. And I think, so I think data is big. And the second thing, the culture just doesn't happen. You've got to engineer it, you've got to, so me as a leader, definitely, I think, and any, any team leader, you know, get your teams together, take them out, take them away from the desk. And it's harder these days, because, you know, we work hybrid, but take them somewhere else. And, you know, talk about failure, you know, and talk about what inspires them and talk about what are they working on? What challenges are they working on? How can we come up with collective, you know, collective solutions? Because I think is the thing is that, you know, someone, if someone's anxious, you say, I'll just relax, it's the worst, no one's just going to relax. And it's like saying, be creative, as if you can do it, you know, on cue, like a performing dog or something, or just turning on a tap, you've got to create the environment, where it's safe to do that. And that's, you know, from my point of view, I, you know, I may, I have that mandate to be able to, you know, bring teams together, out of the office on regular basis, create forums, you know, create creativity, creativity forums, encourage them to share ideas, just keep reinforcing, it's okay to make mistakes, because without mistakes, we don't get any original thinking, you know, as long as we sort of, you know, learn from it, you know, fail fast, learn fast, you know, etc, get back on the horse. But that's where that data and insights comes in as well. So I think those are two areas, you know, really engineering proactively, those kinds of opportunities to come together, and me being there and being present and showing that, you know, encouraging people, you know, what, what was the biggest, what was the biggest success this past month? Okay, and what was the biggest mistake we made? And what would we learn just getting used to using that language, removing the stigma? And I'm saying, you're making mistakes and failure, particularly now, is a necessity. Because if we want to get most universities facing challenges with student recruitment, international student recruitment, doing things the way we've always done them, is part of the reason why we're sort of in this mess, you know, we're not COVID was partly to blame, obviously, but the fact we haven't got that resilience is because a lot of people working very hard, but we're doing the same things we've always done. And we really need to come up with new models and new ways of working and embracing new tech. And that's only going to happen through trial and error, because, you know, we're dealing, you know, look at India compared to China, very different markets, what works for one won't work for the other, there'll be some common things we can do, but there's no one size fits all, and those sorts of complicated problems require more complex solutions. The only way you get to that is by embracing failure, embracing mistakes, I think. Martin, you've already answered so many of our questions in one, it's brilliant to hear you talk about this so much. We will wrap up soon. But before we do, just a quick question, is there anything else you wanted to share, you know, around the Radical Candor, the stuff you mentioned earlier, anything else that you would encourage people to read up around or aspiring kind of leaders or those higher up in their career stage to consider? So I think I mentioned Radical Candor, which is a really good book, and it's now a framework by a lady called Kim Scott, and a lot of the resources are free. And it's a way of giving feedback. And I think that's really important, because giving feedback is often, whether it's formal, informal, you know, and people giving feedback to me as well, you know, upwards as well as downwards, you know, that's all about how we talk about failure and mistakes and what's gone well. So I think learning how to give feedback, have difficult conversations well, and have a more of a coaching style, absolutely facilitates the sort of healthy culture we're talking about. And I mentioned there's like, the model's got the sort of four quadrants, and the top right is where you're aspiring to be this Radical Candor, where you care personally, challenge directly. Okay, so in the past, what I've done is really care, but maybe not challenged enough, and being ruinously empathetic, which sounds quite awful, but where you're, you're trying to just, you know, you're trying to care too much and sugarcoat everything and not have those hard conversations. And people then get to the point where they don't trust you, because you need to give them praise, they don't think this praise isn't worth anything. So I think Radical Candor, I think another, another good one is around psychological safety, there's been a lot written about psychological safety and how we create that. And it's all linked to this environment where, you know, it's very inclusive, everyone feels that their voice is heard, their opinion is valued. But again, it's safe to make, you know, mistakes, and also to disagree well, you know, you know, you're not going to be penalised for having, you know, a different opinion or standpoint to a more senior colleague as well. So there's quite a few, quite a few models out there around psychological safety and failure. And the final point I will leave you with, which if I can, is around imposter syndrome, which again, I think links to this, a lot of us talk about feel like imposters, because we're not competent enough, or we're not good enough, or maybe we, you know, we made mistakes, we dwell on them too much. And Seth Godin, you may have heard of is a bit of a marketing guru in the US podcast, he basically says, you know, all marketing leaders, you know, anybody that works in marketing, comms, leadership, you are an imposter, it's good that you feel like an imposter, because that often means we're doing things that are scary, you know, we're the phrase he uses, we're announcing the future before it's arrived. So we're pushing those boundaries, trying new things, it's uncomfortable. And that's why we feel like we're imposters. So if we didn't feel that way, we probably would be too safe. We're not doing the things we should be doing to push those boundaries. So embrace it, and be an imposter, because that means you're really doing work that's important and vital, and adding value and embracing things that may be, you know, outside your comfort zone as well, which includes making mistakes and seeing the value behind, you know, learning from them as well. What a great point to end on and that embrace it and be an imposter. I really like that way of kind of flipping how you look at that as a concern. So yeah, thank you so much. I feel like I've gained some leadership tips in this myself. As we wrap up there, Martin, just last question, obviously, as I mentioned, you're on the faculty for the Marketing and Comms Institute in February, what are you most looking forward to about that? And I guess as a related question, you know, why do you get involved? Why do you like to support CASE as a volunteer? That's a good question. I think CASE is just, you know, it's just one of those good organisations. It's been around for 50 plus years now. The values of CASE are all about collaboration and being collegial. And I think, you know, without getting too heavy, you know, there's a lot of division in the political discourse, you know, and economic discourse in the world. I think universities, you know, and charitable organisations are a real force for good. And CASE just looks to bring people together from universities and in fundraising. And, you know, I think the people that I met that work at CASE, work in fundraising, they don't do it for the money. What I mean by that is, you know, these are jobs that people do as a vocation to help people, you know, to raise those funds, you know, to go into student hardship and to fund fantastic research. So that's why I really love, you know, being involved with CASE. It's a real privilege. In terms of the Institute, you know, it's for me to learn as well. I think, you know, it would sound quite arrogant to say I'm just going to come out and just, you know, do a sort of, you know, a public broadcast and I would assume everyone's going to agree with me. You know, I, you know, I've been doing this job a long time, but, you know, I'm of a certain age now, certain demographic, I'm not an expert in everything. You know, I want to meet people with diverse backgrounds and to learn from them and to challenge my way of thinking. So I do it just as much to learn from others as I do to maybe help share some of my experiences as well. So it's always a really collaborative, good-natured, collegial discussion. And it's just great to see people come in from across, often across, not just the UK, but from Europe and further afield to come together in the Institute and share ideas, because that's really what I think higher education and fundraising is all about, really. Such a great point, Martin. I mean, I think Mary Rose and I, we both agree that we're learning so much from this, these conversations that we're having as well. Okay, well, Martin, thank you so much for joining us for this little mini bonus episode. We're really grateful. Great conversation and see you soon. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.

leadership

organizational restructure

psychological safety

imposter syndrome

Radical Candor

higher education