#23 Christopher Willcox - The Leadership Fundamentals That Matter

​Chris Willcox has spent his career at the center of global capital markets. From fifteen years at Citigroup to running Rates at JPMorgan, then CEO of JPM Asset Management, one of the largest asset managers in the world, overseeing two trillion dollars.

Today, he's Executive Officer and Head of Wholesale at Nomura - the first non-Japanese executive to hold that role, and Deputy President. He's led trading floors through crises, built businesses from scratch, and done it across three very different corporate cultures.

This is a remarkably open conversation, packed with valuable lessons. Chris explains why the most junior person in the room may know something you don't. Why attention to detail is what separates good from great. And why character and integrity matter more than almost anything else in building a career.

What emerges is a masterclass in the unglamorous fundamentals - character, honesty about mistakes, and the discipline of saying the same thing again and again until people actually hear it.

Chris also reflects on one of the hardest transitions in senior leadership: the moment you stop being the subject matter expert and start leading people who know more than you do. Entering a business as the outsider. Building credibility. Respecting what came before you. Earning the permission to change it. This is a practical, honest and excellent look at leadership from someone who's done it across very different businesses and cultures.

Show Links

Website - https://www.georgiedickins.com

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgiedickins

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@GeorgieDickins-q7x

Transcript

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Hi, I'm Georgie Dickins, host of Stratospheric Leaders, the podcast where I get to have inspired conversations with extraordinary leaders from across capital markets. Join me to hear their game changing strategies, the personal stories, and powerful soundbites behind the stratospheric success. Every episode packed with wisdom. Insight and real world lessons, the stuff they simply don't teach you in business school. If you wanna elevate your game, and most importantly, those around you, this podcast is for you. Enjoy. Welcome back to Stratospheric Leaders. My guest today has spent his career at the very centre of global capital markets, from fifteen years at Citigroup to running rates, and then CEO of JP Morgan Asset Management, one of the largest asset management firms in the world, where he oversaw trillions of dollars in assets. Today, he's executive officer and head of wholesale at Nomura, and the first non-Japanese executive to hold that role, and also now deputy president of the firm. So Chris has led trading floors through crises. He's built businesses from scratch, and he's done it across three very distinct corporate cultures. And he's also had the privileged position of being in my book, Stratospheric CEOs. I'm sure one of your pinch-me moments. So we have had many hours in conversation over the years, so I know that there are gonna be many leadership kernels that the listeners are gonna get to hear. So I'd like to say welcome. Thank you for having me. And look, we are gonna dive into your leadership traits and some of the lessons that have informed your journey, but it's good to know who is Chris Willcox when he's not sitting in the CEO seat at Nomura. And I want to track back to childhood. You were an only child. How would your parents have described the young Christopher Willcox? I think they probably would've said I was a bit of a pain in the backside, but they would probably have described me as pretty shy and pretty introverted. And that's something that I think you know about me, which is that fundamentally, I'm an introvert, which doesn't mean that you always display introverted behaviours, and it doesn't mean that you can't stand up and be social. It just really revolves around where you get your energy from. So I think I was quiet, but they would probably have said I was pretty stubborn. Shy and stubborn. And you said there about… I remember we did a, you were on a panel when we launched the book, and I remember you said, "I've got to go into a dark room after this." I've been in a room full of lots of people for a couple of hours. Where do you get your energy from? I think I get my energy from interacting with smart people. I think that's the thing that really helps me activate my own thought processes. So again, the dark room is more a recovery mechanism. It's not that the dark room is the place where I get my energy from. I also get energy from being around people that I really respect and who I feel I can learn from. And that's a big part of how you can be successful in life, is making sure that you are surrounding yourself with talented people, interesting people, and they tend to bring out the best in you. I agree. I totally agree with you there. And when you mentioned there are people that you've learned from, can you cite one person that's taught you something valuable in your career, and what did they teach you? There are so many people that I've learned from, but one of the things I think people forget about is we spend a lot of time in these kind of conversations talking about what the senior people do. But sometimes the place where you learn the most is from the junior people. And the way in which we think about it, we talk about feedback, and we talk about how you can mentor people. But I think one of the things that is neglected is reverse mentoring. The question when you think about a mentoring relationship

is: 4:30

who's learning from whom? And yes, of course, it's useful sometimes for people to have a more senior person spend time with them, talk to them about their careers, talk to them about what they've learned in their careers. But I'm pretty sure that the person who theoretically is the mentor is often the one that's learning more.'Cause that communication… What I've found is that in mentoring people who are junior to me, that has often been the place where I've learned how to become a better manager, because you're seeing how things happen through somebody else's eyes. Yeah, I think it's, and I think to your point, that the best lessons can come from anywhere within the organisation. I was listening to a podcast recently about a fintech firm, and the CEO said, "We give our summer interns real proximity to the process," and that they're given real responsibility. He said, "Because they're native tech people, we can learn from them." And also, we don't want to become a homogeneous organisation where we all think and act the same. We need to be listening to the kind of people coming in as well, 'cause they have a different perspective, a different way of seeing the world. Hundred percent. But also, the other thing is that the junior people are actually closer to the coalface than people like me. And often, they actually have a deeper knowledge of some of the detail of the day-to-day processes than you do. So one of the things that I've said

to people is: 6:10

you have to listen. You have to listen very carefully, because actually it might be the most junior person in the room that is the one because they're closest to the coalface, that saves you or informs you of the one critical thing that you need to know about. And I've certainly seen that happen in my career. I remember when I heard you speak about your compass you had at JP Morgan. You and I both know Roy reported, I think it was several rungs below you, but he gave you some feedback in, I think it was 2007, that saved the company a lot of money, and he was the one that… You created the psychological safety for him to put his hand up and say,"I think your calculations as a group are wrong." And am I right? And he ultimately saved the division a lot of money. Is that correct? That's true. That was Roy Aviner, as you know. And it was the Sunday night before Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy, and we'd been on all weekend working out what our risk positions were. So we were ready to do risk replacement at the open. And as we went through the plan, Roy put his hand up and said to us that he thought we had the wrong sign on our cross currency basis swap position. I'd like to think that I created a zone of psychological security, but I think in fact what I did was pretty much say, "Thanks very much, but I think I know what I'm doing here." But also, very fortunately, I was smart enough to check whether he was right or not, and he was right. And yeah, it saved us a very large amount of money, because we would've executed the wrong way round into the market on the open. And Roy, at that point… Now he's, I think, a very successful senior investor at a hedge fund. But in those days, he was a very junior analyst. And so, despite the fact that I didn't create that zone of psychological security for him, he was brave enough to speak up. But since then, I learned that you'd better make sure that you listen very carefully, no matter how junior the person is, because quite often they know more about the detail than you do. And he happened to know that the way our systems worked at that point,'cause he was doing it every day and I was sitting in a glass office most of the day, he happened to know that it actually portrayed that position with a different sign on it. And I suppose it is that listening

that you speak to: 8:40

two ears, one mouth, and testing hypotheses. I think sometimes we can be so busy doing and moving fast. Actually, it's when we listen that it's like, "What might we be missing? Where might we have got something wrong?" Yeah, exactly. I like to think you got a bigger bonus that year as a result. He did, he definitely did. Although, I think he's done a lot better since then, which is good, because he is a super smart guy. Yeah, I love Roy. And before we dive into more about your leadership, having known you for a number of years, I know we talked about where you get your energy from. I know you are very good at making sure you've got your outlets, which are golf and sailing and diving, and several years ago you crossed the Atlantic sailing. When you think about that kind of pursuit, what did you learn about yourself? And then, equally, I suppose the

second part of that is: 9:35

what are the lessons that you apply in your own leadership from that experience? Yeah, so sailing across the Atlantic was quite an experience. I have a sailing boat and me and three friends sailed across the Atlantic from Canary Islands to the Caribbean. We were at sea for 21 days. I think there were a couple of things we learned from it. The first thing is that there's three of you are sailing a 70 foot sailing boat in pretty big seas, sometimes in quite bad weather. and it really, reminds you of how you have to keep your, how you have to preserve your energy levels. we used to have a saying on the

boat: 10:22

"You are a battery, and you need to recharge." And so don't let your battery run too low, otherwise you're not going to be any use to any of the other people on the boat. So obviously we had a watch system, but we also had a rule that if anyone felt that they were particularly run down, that they would speak up straight away and we would, and that there'd be no questions asked that they could go and have a rest and somebody else would, step in. Because what we really wanted to make sure was in situations where we really needed people, to step up, that they were ready. And I think that's, an important thing for work as well, where, you do need to make sure that you build time into your schedule to make sure that you're fully charged. Because when the cri, when a crisis occurs, you don't want a crisis to occur when you're on a very low, when you're on a very low battery. so you know that was something that was really important. If there's only four of you and you are having to sail a boat 24 hours a day, to make sure that everybody's in good condition and that their health is okay. and I think that's something that, you hear Jamie Dimon talk a lot about in, JP Morgan, which is you have to make time, to make sure that you are physically, and mentally in good shape to be high performing in your job. I think the other thing we, I mean we had a great trip, but, like all of these things, it was challenging. So, for the first week or so, we had very, heavy weather. and quite a lot of the boats in the race that we were participating in dropped out. and we broke almost everything on the boat. and on the first day, the one of the foresail got jammed. So we couldn't use our foresail for a couple of days. Then the water maker broke, then we had, then we had a minor fire in the engine. and so after the first week or so, pretty much everything had gone wrong. We figured we were doing really badly. we didn't have a lot of communication with the shore. We had one email a day that came through our satellite phone, and then pretty much halfway across the Atlantic, our mainsail tore in half. And we had to spend several hours trying to jury-rig a sail. So for the second half of the Atlantic crossing, we only had half a, mainsail. and at the end of it all, we got. a little bit past halfway across and turned out we were in fourth position. the lesson that we learned was, actually, you've got to remember, that no matter how bad things look at any moment in time, you've got to keep an eye on what everybody else is doing and what the relative positions are. So, we got halfway across thinking we'd done absolutely terribly. And it turned out we were actually doing quite well. and that was the lesson, which was, however, bad things look, just keep, going. and maybe you'll find that everybody else has struggled as well. from that point on, we, we're, the second half of, the crossing. We're feeling pretty good about ourselves. we're in fourth place. Lots of people have dropped out. the weather's improved now, and we're starting to think we're, we're pretty hot stuff and we're pretty impressed with ourselves. And as we got towards the last week where we're approaching the Caribbean, I would say we were pretty self satisfied. And then one night, I'm on my night watch at say three, four o'clock in the morning. It's pitch black outside. And I can see on our, radar system that there's a small boat ahead of us, and suddenly the radio goes. And we haven't seen another boat for the entire crossing. We didn't see another boat the whole way across it. And radio goes and it says, this is, perseverance. We're calling, the boat that's coming up behind us. We just want to check that you've seen us 'cause we're not moving very fast. So I get on the radio, I say, hi, and it's a woman's voice. And I say, hi, this is, sailing yacht Manti. How are you? What are you doing out here? And she goes, we're this, we're four girls and we're, just rowing across the Atlantic. and we've been 37 days out so far, and we've pretty much run out of food and living on chocolate bars. So just at the moment when I was thinking we were pretty good and we were pretty tough for sailing across the Atlantic, we come across a boat with four girls who are rowing across the Atlantic. so equally the opposite lesson applies that just when you're thinking that you are pretty good at that, you're pretty good and you're doing pretty well, there's probably always somebody out there who's doing something even more, impressive and amazing than you are. So you've got to stay humble, as well. I love the fact their boat was called perseverance. That feels a very fitting, word that would've carried them. Do you know if they made it to the, they got to the Caribbean? they rowed it to Antigua. And what I would say about it is that, sailing across the Atlantic is quite hard. but rowing across the Atlantic in a rowing boat is completely insane. there's, as I say, whenever you get pretty impressed with yourself, remember that there's almost certainly somebody out there that's doing something a lot more impressive than you are. and yeah, they made it an, amazing, thing to do. Yeah, that's it. But they did an amazing, it was an amazing feat. And equally, your sail across the Atlantic and there are so many things that came up for me listening to you. You mentioned the weather. It's like, control what you can control. Influence what you can influence. And I'm sure there are so many different weather patterns and like there's certain things you just, have to go with it. And knowing this too shall pass. and you said about that staying fit for purpose and it's okay to put your hand up to say, you know what? I need to take a break. And I think of pq, our physiology quotient. We have eq, we have iq, but our physiology quotient is making sure we're resourced and whether we're rowing a boat, sailing or within a corporate, we need to be fit for purpose. And we have to be the ones that put our hand up. No one's gonna save us or be like, you should take a break. Like it has to come from within. A hundred percent. And it's important, it's really, yeah. so if you, want to have high performing people, you got to make sure that they're, in good condition at the moments when they're gonna be needed. And the more you, the more senior you become, the more actually your contribution is concentrated into some pretty key decision making moments. and, as a manager, or a leader, all of the, people that work for you or who you are responsible to, really rely upon you to get a relatively small number of key decisions right at, at specific moments in time. Yeah. it, they don't necessarily need you to be on top form all of the time, but what they need you to do is make sure that you are, capable of making high quality decisions at the moments that those decisions are imperative. Yeah. and I think that rest or taking care of ourselves, like rest isn't the opposite of productivity. rest is what protects productivity. it's, and we'll all have different, we'll all have different outlets and different, but it's making sure, those energy sources and prioritising and protecting those, going to energy. I imagine earlier this year there was a high energy on your side when Sunderland did really well in the, Sunderland football club over here. my children are avid football supporters, and I know you as a Sunderland supporter, so I, it's something I, just, again, I, we, have the football scores coming in in our household on a Saturday and this season, as I understood it, they finished seventh, which was quite an achievement for Sunderland their best in 25 years. they qualified for European football, which was the first time in 50 years. So look, you manage lots of teams and people like what makes a great team? Let's talk about what made Sunderland great. look, firstly, I think if, generally speaking from a business perspective, you would want success to be more frequent, and consistent than Sunderland have been over the last a hundred years. and being a Sunderland supporter is, definitely one of the more painful, experiences. But they have new ownership. I think many people will have seen the TV series Sunderland 'Til I Die. so they can, if they, if you've watched that, you can gather some of the pain of being a Sunderland supporter. But in the last few years, they've got new ownership, new management, and they've done a pretty amazing job of building themselves, back up. and I'd say what they've really done there is that they have been, very thoughtful about having a clear plan, and then being aggressive with their investment at the right moment. So they, got promoted into the Premier League last season. they were the playoff club, that came up in third place. So they were absolutely the favourites to be immediately relegated back down, from the Premier League, in the same season. and they avoided that by, being pretty aggressive around the investment that they made, in players. So I think that's one thing. But I think the other thing was making sure, and the real sort of miracle of that team is how they, went out, invested in new players, but still seemed to have generated a really coherent culture, where, those players were united and were playing for each other. and that's where the manager, received a lot of plaudits last season because, to, have that much turnover in your team, and still be able to get it to play together as a team was an amazing achievement. So it's the first time they've been, they qualified for Europe since 1973. and, I'll be looking forward to seeing how they do, next season. And that, that coherent culture that you speak about, you've been a leader, a number of different organisations at the most senior level. What do you think are the ingredients that go into making a coherent culture? I think, I think firstly you have to have a clear statement of what your mission is. and I think, and secondly, I think you have to communicate it and probably communicate it much more frequently, and regularly than most people think. And, that's been one of the big lessons that I learned, particularly at JP Morgan, was that even though you may feel that you've told people what the strategy is, told people what the plan is repeatedly in town halls and other modes of communication or quarterly podcasts or whatever the mechanism is that you use to communicate that it's still never gonna be enough. And, that repetition and consistency are incredibly important. And if you ever do employee surveys, no matter how much you think you've explained the strategy to people, you're still gonna have about a third of your employees saying they dunno what the strategy is. So that job, never ends. and so it is not just a matter of having a strategy, which obviously is a pretty useful, prerequisite, but it's, a matter of, communicating it and then realising that the communication job actually never ends. and then also making it consistent over, time so that, because clearly you're not gonna have a strategy that remains unchanged indefinitely, but that there's a connection between, the where you've come from and where you are going to. mechanism that I have often used is we would generally have, let's say three to five, big, priorities in the business, which we would communicate, at the beginning of the year. And then the whole way through the year, we would be communicating progress against those priorities. And then you would review them in, let's say your, as you, prepared your strategy for the next year. And then you would stand up and explain that maybe, three of the five priorities are the same, and you've got two new ones because two have been achieved. And that you make sure that there's a consistency year on year. and ultimately there's a, there's an enormous amount of power in doing that. If you get to the point where your employees are making fun of your five messages, that means that they've remembered them. and if you go through, if you have. It's, very powerful to have a coherent strategy that you can explain, to third parties and to your own employees. but it's even more powerful if, you've got several thousand employees who can all name them. And if a third party asks them what the strategy of their organisation is, they all say the same thing. suddenly you have a, flywheel effect in terms of people understanding what's going on. And why is that important? It's important, because, it allows people to focus on their jobs. we underestimate how much time, the people that work for us need to spend worrying about the direction of the business or the firm that they're working for. if you don't do a good job of that communication, but if they really clearly understand, what the, what the, path is, then, then they will understand a lot of the things that are going on around them. They'll feel more confident, they'll feel more motivated, and they'll feel able to focus on what their task is. And if you think about, what happens very often in your day-to-day life, and maybe this happened to you when you were working at JP Morgan or, some other firm, but you're sitting at your desk and you've got your email open and suddenly an email drops into your inbox and the email says something along the lines of,"We would like to, we're pleased to announce that we've just appointed so-and-so as the global head of air conditioning."" They will have a reporting line to X, but also have a dotted line to Y, and we'll work in close coordination with the heating department." And you look at this and you think to yourself, what is that all about? Why have we, why do we who, I dunno who this person is. I don't know why we need a global head of air conditioning. Why have they got so many reporting lines? You know what, I'm just gonna delete this email right now. If for the last three years you've been told by your management that one of the five key initiatives of the firm is to have better air conditioning, then when that drops in your inbox, you look at it, you say, I know air conditioning's one of the priorities of the firm. Now we've got a global head of it. And it's consistent with what I've been told our strategy's gonna be. Okay, that sounds good. I feel pretty good about that. and then probably you delete the email as well. But the difference between the two is one of them goes, this is confusing. And God knows if the people above us know what they're doing. And the second one is actually, that makes sense. It's in line with what I've been told. I don't really need to know exactly what all the reporting lines are, but it looks like they know what they're doing and I can move on. So I think that's sort of key thing. And so I'm really hearing that as a leader, it's about being the CCRO as well, like the chief reinforcement or the chief repetition officer, making sure that mission, that vision, the priorities are clear, they're consistent, and there's a repetition. And if there's a boomerang, they come back to you as well. It's like I know that they've, I know that people are getting the message. And you also said at the beginning, using different modes.'cause I'm assuming, some people want to see you, some people want to hear you. So it's not just saying it's only gonna be town halls. It's recognising that, different modes and, using them all. the world's changed in terms of all of, look at what we're doing today. the world has changed in terms of how you can communicate. In some ways it's easier because, we've got so many different media that we can use to get messages across. and, I do internal podcasts, we do town halls, we do, various different group sessions and, we've got all sorts of business resource groups. So there are multiple opportunities, for communicating with people. And just because, for example, you may be talking to a women's group, or you may be talking to one of the other business resource groups. Actually all of those groups are interested in the business. when we, do things on diversity in our organisations, I spend most of that time talking about the business because, that's actually what the people in those groups are also interested in. So there are multiple different opportunities and forums for you to get the message across. and, you've got to, you've got to, you've just got to keep reinforcing it, with people, because ultimately people want to know, everybody who's working here is highly invested in the success of this place, and therefore has a real stake in what the strategy is. And before anything else, they want to understand what it is, and then they'll take a view, a qualitative view on it as well. I just want to pivot a second before you, your pathway into finance. You were at, St Edward's School, in Oxford. I think it's known as Teddy's. And I understand recently you were invited back, to their leavers or their speech day as the, guest speaker, which I can only imagine is a real honour and probably very eye-opening going back, I dunno how many decades? Like several decades later, steady. Steady. No. I think. Is it two, three? now I, heard some of your speech and there was one, there were several lessons you shared, but I'd love for you to share a little bit about that attention to detail. I think that's such a critical skill and that was one of the four lessons that you shared. So I wondered if you could speak to that a little bit. I think the theme of the speech was, what were the things I wish I'd known when I left school, in terms of being successful in my career? and there were four things, attention to detail, embrace failure, speak up and character. and the attention to detail point was, look, the things that make us successful aren't just the big things, but most of our successes come from an aggregation of, small things going well. And so you have to pay a lot of attention to small things because small things going wrong or being done badly can obscure much bigger successes. And you think about the number of times when overall you've got something successful, but people focus on the one little thing that didn't, go well. And, so attention to detail helps you avoid being derailed by that, but it's also, an important part of your own development. when I started out on the trading floor, one of the things I did to differentiate myself was I, was very, detailed around checking everything, and trying to be the person that avoided mistakes. So yeah, every position, every trade, I double checked. I volunteered for all of the sort of miserable jobs of, reconciling the ledgers at the end of the day doing, month end reconciliations and all of those kind of things. And, I was able to differentiate myself in that way by not making too many mistakes, which inevitably you're gonna make, but also maybe catching other people's mistakes before they turned into a problem so I could add value. And in doing it, Yeah. I taught myself all the plumbing of how the systems and reporting worked. And that's obviously a useful thing to do if you want to get ahead on a trading floor. but what it really did was it made the senior people on the desk trust me. and so ultimately when, if people, find that they can trust you on small things, then they are much more likely to trust you with big things. And then when the opportunity comes to step up or if there's a book available that somebody can step into, you are gonna find yourself at the top of that list because you've demonstrated trustworthiness and competence. Yeah, I love that. And I love the aggregation of the small things going well. things compound and that volunteering that you speak to, I think that's great for visibility as well. It's exposure, it's, you're prepared to do things that other people don't want to do. The boring and the mundane task. But that's giving, that's building a profile. It's building a personal brand. And you said there, see where you can add value. you said the fourth lesson was character, what are the character traits that you think are really important for the world of work today? it is something that I, often give speeches to new joiners or to summer intern groups and people like that. And, often what I'll do is I'll ask them, towards the end, what do you think the most important, thing is in our, in our decision making around hiring? what is it we want you, to, bring? And, they're, all these days, all of the young people coming through these programmes are so much more well-trained than we were when, at least I was, when I was starting out. They've all been coached and they're all very, well prepared and articulate. and they come up with great answers. they'll say, look, we think we, you, want, good team players. You want, people who have maybe attention to details, strong technical skills, a passion for learning, commitment. all of those good answers, which are all true. And they're all, they're, they are all things that we want, you know, subject matter, expertise, whatever. but, they often don't, give me what I think is the single most important thing that you're looking for when you hire somebody, which is, character. I think all of those other things, so long as you have intelligence and application, either we can teach them to you, or you can learn them for yourself. But the one thing that you have to bring to the table is, character and integrity. And, often people will say to me, that's obvious. we know that. and you say, yes, you know it in theory, but what's gonna happen to you in your career is that you're gonna get tested in practice. And in practice. You're gonna be a junior person sitting on a trading desk, and you're gonna make a mistake. And that mistake's gonna cost millions of dollars. And you're gonna be sitting there thinking to yourself, this is the end of the world. I'm, gonna get fired for this. Certainly that happened to me, in my early career. And, at that point. There will be a really strong temptation for you, to try to either hide it or avoid the issue, or not put your hand up quickly. And that's the biggest, the worst thing that you can possibly do. the lesson that I always say to these folks who are starting out their careers is, you will find yourself in this situation for sure, in some form or another. You'll find yourself in a situation where you think something that something catastrophic has happened. And when you do remember this, put your hand up immediately. Ask for help, because ultimately people will trust and respect you if you do that. And that's how you get on in your career. and you won't get fired for making a mistake. what you'll get fired for is hiding it or being dishonest about it. And I think, that's the most important thing. Now, I do go on to tell them one other thing, which is, having said all of that, if you keep making the same mistake over and over again, You'll get you will eventually get fired for it. make sure that you, make sure that you, learn from those mistakes. And I think it's recognising we're all human and mistakes will happen. And it's what you do in those moments that matter. And look, being a CEO, of, a public company, there is a degree of scrutiny that comes with a seat. And in the world that we live in, there's a lot of visibility and things can cascade up very quickly. What is the worst thing you've ever read about yourself? other than in my sort of 360 reviews, which probably have had a few, things, the newspaper story that you are referring to is the one that was, entitled The Wolf of Wall Street that It would be heard of. which I felt was pretty harsh to be honest, because firstly, the Wolf of Wall Street was a criminal who went to jail. And, so I'm not sure that's entirely a fair comparison. And for the second reason I thought it was unfair is I feel like, some people do know me, it's like, not like nobody has ever heard of me. but, so I think, look, it's, it was a slow news day, I guess on that day, and quite an amusing headline given it had a picture of me, It's Leo. next to a picture of Leonardo DiCaprio. Which I figured if I ever ended up in a newspaper with, in, with a picture of myself next to Leonardo DiCaprio, either I would've done something really bad, or I would've done something really fun. and neither of those things was true, in this case. But yeah, the reality is that, there's a lot of scrutiny. You have to be pretty cognizant about, what you say, what you do, because nobody's gonna give you the benefit of the doubt when you are in the public eye. and that is challenging. More importantly, I think, the question would be what are the impacts on other people? if I'm being interviewed and, I'll make a comment about one or other of my businesses, the people who work in those businesses will be listening to that. sometimes I end up coming back from the CNBC or Bloomberg Studio to, someone, on the trading floor saying, so I heard you said,"Repo was a low margin business." Are we really a low margin business? I said, "No, I love you guys. I love you guys. I was just making a relative point." So yeah, you end up with a lot of scrutiny. You've got to assume that people are listening to what you say. You've also got to assume that people are not giving you the benefit of the doubt, that, if there's a negative interpretation of what you say that, there will be some people, that take it. But on the other hand, how do you deal with that? Ultimately, you deal with it, I think by being, trying to be, scrupulously, straightforward and clear in the things you say, but also by building a track record of, of trustworthiness. And and often you do that and, part of how you do that is being pretty clear. When you make mistakes, we're all gonna say the wrong thing. Sometimes get on top of it. Apologise, make it right with anybody that you think has been impacted by it. And just be very straight about it. And then I think over a long period of time, if you've demonstrated those behaviours, then people will start giving you the benefit of the doubt. Yeah. No, I agree with you and I think when you said, build a track, record of trustworthiness, that comes with time. And equally, it's recognising even if you are very cognizant and thoughtful with your words, people can misinterpret a word, can have a different meaning. So I suppose you can, it's like just do your best knowing that sometimes it will be misrepresented, but then it's like how you respond to that. it's also, it is not just that, it's that, as you say, some of the things you say are gonna be misinterpreted, and you are, you can go and apologise for that and, or clarify that. And maybe some people, will believe you. Some people won't believe you. But if you've built a track record of people believing that you are straightforward and candid, what's more powerful is if other people, are willing to advocate for you, if you misspeak, but you've got a long track record of having, demonstrated, integrity, then the really powerful thing is if somebody tries to misinterpret what you said. if a third party turns around and says, "No, we know that guy and we know that he does the right thing." So yeah, maybe he misspoke, but, other people defending you because they've built, a level of trust in you over time is far more powerful than you trying to defend yourself. It makes me think, there's a couple of celebrities that come to mind in the UK where they both involved in, one was like a drink driving. Another one was they did something naughty. and it was interesting because, this oI'm waiting for what the comparison here is is because I've not done either of those things, just to be clear. no. Just to be clear. no. but there was this one person, who loads of people came and be like, look, they're going through a really bad time in their life. They really advocated for them, and the other person, no one stood up for them. And it was interesting because it's I think in those moments, the point that you just shared there, you know, that track record of trustworthiness, people typically will show up if, and, but if you haven't earned that, people won't just show up because you are asking them to in the moment that comes through over time. A hundred percent agree with that. Yeah, and I wasn't saying that either you, Jana, it was just that's what came from. Let's just talk about, leading people because you are known across the industry for being, a great leader of people. my question where it takes me, how do you get great results or high results out of people? It's one thing getting results, but how do you get high results out of your people? the simple answer is that the way you get great results outta people is that you make sure that they're motivated. and, there are lots of different ways of doing that. and some of them are also about just having the right reward and recognition structures in place. but, it's also about them, as we've already discussed about the communication side. People feeling they, understand what the strategy is.'cause if they don't understand what the strategy is, then it is very hard for them to feel personal buy-in as well. And I would say, also you need to ensure that you get the right balance of, of, involving yourself directly in managing people, but also avoiding micromanaging them. and that's difficult because the balance is different at different times. There are certain situations where people need, their manager to step in and manage them more closely actually, because they need the support. and then there are other times where, they need their manager to be a little bit hands off and let them, take their own path. So there's a judgement call in there. but ultimately I think if people feel, I think it boils down to trust. I think if people trust their bosses, they will, perform better. they'll feel more confident. And I think if you trust your people, then they will perform better, but also you will perform better, as a manager. And that trust that you speak to goes in both directions. And, when you think about your own leadership style, what do you think is your USP? Either it's something known to you or it's, come up in that 360 that you talked about. there's a word that's used a lot in politics at the moment, which is, it's a very imprecise word. and I'm not trying to claim it necessarily for myself, but it's certainly an aspiration. But I think that what I aspire to do as a manager is be somebody who is authentic. And so that, at the very least, whether people agree or disagree with me, they believe that I'm open and candid about, what the strategy is, what my feedback to them is. and I think that's, if, you can speak to people in non-corporate speak, you'll get a lot more buy-in, than otherwise. And it probably leads you to more candid, more direct conversations, and that gets you from A to B faster in terms of, assessing any issues or driving the business forward, or explaining to people what the expectations are for them and for you. so my aspiration would be, that people would view you as somebody who, is a straight talker, and is, direct. Now, obviously that we all find that hard to do at times, because some of the things that we're dealing with are complicated and, we don't like hurting each other's feelings. giving feedback is hard. All of the things that go with that are hard. but I think as much as, possible, that's how I would like my USP to be. But I think probably other people are more equipped to tell me whether I succeed in that or not. But the word that, the feedback word you mentioned there, in, sports they say that feedback is the oxygen of champions because we can only do better when we know better. And, if you are a Sunderland footballer or if you are Lewis Hamilton, you've got feedback from your coach, from your team members, from when in soccer, the referee. There's this feedback coming from so many different angles and it, I always find it interesting how there are some leadership teams where there's a real, this aversion to feedback, but actually this is, to your point, like role model it from the top. And culturally there should be something we all embrace because it's, it's a quote, whoever it is, feedback is a gift. it's Yeah, everybody, people say feedback's a gift, but the honest truth is no one, no one likes feedback, right? what people like is good feedback, Yes, they do. And, but, here's the thing. We know nobody really likes feedback regardless of what all the management books tell you. and that it only feels like a gift when you're being told that you're great. Yeah, or getting promoted or a pay rise. Exactly right. nevertheless, clearly very important. But what people don't tell you, because when we talk about feedback, most people are really focused on the receiving of the feedback. and as I say, no one really likes getting it unless it's positive. but what they don't really tell you is that giving feedback is really difficult because actually, as humans in some ways, giving feedback is even more difficult, which is why so many people who are going down the wrong path are suddenly surprised when something bad happens. And the truth of the matter is, very rarely have people given them honest direct feedback because it's just as uncomfortable for the person giving it as it is for the person receiving it. and if you think about it, there are lots of coping mechanisms and, one of them, the famous sandwich feedback, right? So the sandwich feedback is, I'm going, I'm gonna give you a piece of feedback sandwiched between two positive bits of feedback. And so you say, "Georgie, you're an innovative and energetic individual, sometimes your work colleagues don't appreciate everything about how you communicate. You've got an amazing approach to the business, blah, blah, blah, blah," I've only had the good, I've just taken it. only one bit of feedback in there, and it's not the bit you are listening to, right? The one bit of feedback is you've got an issue with your work colleagues on your communication style. The rest of it is fluff, right? And it's fluff designed to make the person giving the feedback feel more comfortable. And, yet the number of times where I've had, let's say I've been mentoring, a junior person, and they'll come to me and I'll have a periodic sit down with them and they'll say to me, I'll say,"How's it going? Have you had your feedback with your manager?" And he'll say, ""Yeah, no, it's going great." I'm doing really well. Manager said, I've done everything. Okay, the one thing, one little thing that I could improve on is my attention to detail, but other than that, I'm really on the right track." And you're seeing there going, there's alarms going off in my head.'cause this young person thinks everything's great and that there's just a tiny little thing that they need to fix. But the truth is. Attention to detail, as we've already discussed, is probably the most important thing, especially at that stage in somebody's career. And the only bit of feedback that manager's been trying to give that person is they're making too many mistakes and that their attention to detail's not good enough. And it's probably a real derailer, right? And I'm curious because I, and I agree with you. I think there are so many, I think people feel really challenged. I think the feed, the word feedback and, sorry, my dog just came in. Clearly, he's interested to hear all about feedback. and I think it can really provoke a physiological response, in people. And sometimes people come up those conversations thinking I delivered the feedback, but the person on the other end is like doing a great job. what are your practical strategies for giving high quality feedback? you've spoken about directness and openness, but what does that look like in action? I think one of the things that you can do, I don't know that I'm the world's best expert at giving feedback either. I'm probably as uncomfortable with it as most people. although the longer you've done it for, and I guess the more senior you get to some, degree, the easier it gets. But one of the things that you can do, is ask for permission because then you are signalling something, which is you're signalling a couple of things. One is you need to listen to this.'cause the fact that I'm asking for permission means this is something you probably should listen to. And the second thing is I think you're signalling that it is not meant, in a negative way or that you're trying to help. and so I think if you really need to give somebody really significant feedback, first of all, asking their permission to do so is a really good signalling mechanism for them to say, you need to listen to this, and by the way, it's not very comfortable for me to give it to you. that would be one bit of advice I would give. And that speaks to, you talked about aspiration, it being authentic. I think that's being authentic. Like it's not easy. Adam Grant from wha, he's a professor at Wharton Business School. He speaks to, I think it's 19 words, but don't count. But in case I've got the number on, but I'm giving you this feedback because I have high expectations of you, which I'm confident you can deliver against, so that I'm giving you this feedback because I have high expectations. Like the bar is high and I'm confident you're gonna get there. but it's, so it's really stating the intent and the belief. You assuming that obviously you do believe in that person, it'll be inauthentic if you thought they were on their way out. but I just thought it was a nice way to frame it. because again, people can't correct, or, and, I often see this in, there's the great saying by, Marshall Goldsmith - What Got You Here Won't Get You There. And it's, for all of us, if we are going up the ladder, we're adding more responsibilities and tasks, some of the biggest challenges. What are you, let go of. Yeah, no, I like that. I think it's, in fact, I might use it next time. so that's a good tip. but, as one of my old, from my old TE 10 Lessons of Leadership, one of my 10 lessons was, what made you successful is also what will make you fail. And it's so true, and I think it's some people are good at recognising what to let go of others. it's, really hard. And that, you said, earlier on about your leadership. Like you, don't want to micromanage, but sometimes you do need to be in the details. It's, it is really understanding at what altitude do you need to be for any given situation. And sometimes there is no playbook. It's, there's it like an intuition or of just having to feel into what feels the right place to be. Agreed. When you think, last question before I do a very quick fire round. when you think of the role of leadership today versus, when you started and we've, however many, several decades ago, how do you see things differently from when you first stepped into a very senior role? how do I see things differently? I think that obviously the, gap between the people that you are responsible for managing in age gets wider as you go up. so, that sort of paying attention to making sure that sort of common, understanding, and communication becomes more challenging. So you have to, do that. I would say though that in general, the work environment that I work in today is a far more enlightened, inclusive, and welcoming environment than was, as I say, 35 years ago, whatever it was, when, I started out. and so I think, I think whether that's down to individuals or whether it's down to a wider societal change, I think qualitatively the work environment we operate in has improved. And I think that the responsibilities that, managers take in terms of managing people, thinking about it, thinking about, whether their management style, is helping the people that work for them is inclusive or, is effective. people, I think people spend more time thinking about those things. And I think generally when I look around me, the managers that I have, underneath me working, are, more enlightened and more, effective people managers than they were 35 years ago, because we spend more time on it. It's a more professional environment. We train, we think about it, we read about it. We coach people, we train people, so, I think there is a big, I genuinely believe, I dunno if it's just our industry, but I think there is a big qualitative change in the quality of, managers that we see around, we see around the business. The other thing that I think changed for me is just is, which is a more personal thing, which is. That when you first come into a, the early stages of the management ladder, you go into those jobs as the, as a huge subject matter expert. When you become head of a desk or head of a department or whatever it is, you will tend to be the most knowledgeable person in terms of subject-matter expertise around whatever that function is or whatever that business is. And at some point in your career, you get promoted to a place where you are running multiple businesses and you are no longer the subject matter expert. You are now having to manage people who know more than you know about the specific area that they're responsible for. and that is a huge pivot point in people's careers. And it's probably the pivot point at which there's the highest vulnerability of failure. because you've now got to move from saying my job is to be the most expert person that can tell these people what to do and point out where they're making mistakes. To being a person that says, my job is actually to build a team made up of different people with different expertise and gel that together. And to have a general sense of how to guide those people in the right direction. A big part of the job is now who gets appointed into the roles below me rather than the subject matter expertise. So I think that move from being a sort of, subject matter expert manager to being a broader functional manager with, pretty senior people underneath you is a huge pivot point. And your skill sets, that's the point at which the skill sets that you are applying need to change the most. And it's also the point at which people often struggle, to make that change. Yeah, I remember someone saying about Adina Friedman, she's an inch of an expert on every aspect of the business, but you can't be the expert. you have the Avengers. I love talking about the Avengers, who are leading every pillar, but you can't possibly know everything about everything. but again, it's, and I imagine for you, as you've led through, you career, you've gone from sell side to buy side to sell side, American, Japanese, so you've had to continually iterate based on different environments. So it's that adaptability as well. Adina Friedman's a bit of a legend, so I'm very happy to be, talked about in the same breath as her. So let's keep that thought like me and Adina Friedman, but, yeah, look, I think the trick is, yeah, as you said, I've moved from, very different types of business from sell side to buy side, back to sell side, from American firms to a Japanese firm. I think the thing that you have to do if you are, as you, and, that's a more extreme version of going up into these different management jobs. and I would say that the most important thing to doing that is, is making sure that you respect the businesses that you're taking over, the people that are in, and what's been built before you got there. and it may be that, you go in there and you want to change things, but if you're gonna have credibility in changing those things, the people in that business have to believe that you understand their business, that you respect the achievements that have been, achieved in the past. And you need to take some time to establish that. if you come into a business, often, if you are, being put into a business as a new manager, or you are being hired from outside, as I was at Nomura, where we had a few, issues that needed resolving at the time. the first, thing you have to do, is demonstrate, that you have respect for, what has gone before you. because in doing that, you'll gain the credibility to make the changes that you may feel are necessary to move forward. And if the people in that business think that you come in as a critic, they will not trust you. A 'cause they're not sure that you're qualified to be a critic yet, 'cause you haven't been there for very long. And b, because by its very nature a critic is, like an enemy. But if they believe that you are an advocate, then, they'll be motivated to, help you, to work with you. And then they'll come along with you on the journey of change that you need to have. So what you'll find is, when I came in here to Nomura, Nomura had a big problem, but the people and the businesses that I inherited were world class. The calibre of the people I have here is exceptional. They are the best people I've worked with in my career. And the things that they had achieved before I got here, which I've been lucky enough to be able to build on, were incredibly impressive. And yes, there were some short-term problems that needed fixing. and yes, there were some significant actions and changes that I wanted to take in order to do that. But you'd never hear me say a bad word about, the inheritance that I had because the inheritance that I had was excellent. and what, I was able to do was then add value to that. And I think, once people believe that you see that value, they will be much more inclined to help you make change. and they'll be much more inclined to trust the direction to take the business in. Yeah, I think that's really important. You said that how you show up and if you're, whether you are joining a new company, whether you're taking on a new role within an organisation, how you show up, how you set the tone, you want people to be on the journey and you want, people to trust you and, that comes down, words and actions aligning. And, so look, I have taken so many notes from this conversation. As always, I leave our conversations energised, buzzing with more, leadership insights. There are five that quick I, ice, not icebreaker, quick fire. and, these are like one word or single sentence, single sentence, statements because this is like the barbells, we've got to know you at the beginning a little bit. Who is Chris when he is not CEO? sitting in the CEO seat and we're gonna recap there as well. So if not finance, what industry. I definitely want to be a firefighter. Which I thought you were gonna say a sailor firefighter. Okay. What, okay. And what I don't know. I think like fire. Lots of hoses. Yeah. A firefighter. Firefighter. Okay. A book you've enjoyed, and I know you've, you read a lot of history, a book you've enjoyed. So I like pretty much anything by Dominic Sandbrook.'cause I, just, love his books. or Ben Macintyre for that reason, for that matter as well. He's, great. But the, if there's one book in the last year that I read, which I really liked, it's called The Finest Hotel in Kabul, it's by Lyse Doucet, who's A BBC reporter. and it's just an amazingly well-written book and it looks at Afghanistan and, all of the tribulations it's been through the eyes of the employees of a hotel in Kabul that she used to stay at as a reporter. It's a great book. So you should definitely buy it and read it. I'll buy that for my travels. Now, I know you are on a plane a lot of the time, so a streaming se, series or show you've enjoyed. the obvious one would be Ted Lasso, which I did. but I really enjoyed,'cause I'm a history buff. The Ken Burns, documentary series on Vietnam. I think Ken Burns is an amazing, documentary maker. and then for junk, watching, there was a series called For All Mankind, and it's a sort of space series. and it's an alternative history, where it starts out on the premise that the Russians got to the moon before the Americans and it has a sort of whole, multi-decade space race. it's a good watch, but it's obviously largely junk, but it's, really good. Okay. I like that. I always like a good recommendation. One app you use regularly on your phone, that's not WhatsApp, not text, not email. Yeah, audible. Or, okay. but, Audible is my most used app. and I, you have two daughters and I'm just curious, they've been with you on your, we talked about being on the journey. They've been on, your journey with you watching you lead at the highest levels. What's one thing you hope they've taken from your journey? I think aacouple of things. One is, I think from my perspective, when I started out, I, don't think anybody would've voted me most likely to become a senior manager, either at university or on the first trading desk I worked at. so I think the real lesson is that, that, where you end up is, hard to predict, but the possibilities are pretty broad. But I'd say the other thing that I would hope they would learn is that success or progress or doing interesting things, you don't have to be perfect because, if you had to be perfect, and make no mistakes and be great at everything, then I wouldn't have got anywhere. And so I think one of the things that when I look at this young generation, they're, a pretty interesting generation, but sometimes I worry that they feel like they have to be perfect at everything. And maybe that's pressures of social media or whatever, but you actually don't have to be perfect. And actually often it's your own idiosyncrasies that set you apart and, can make you successful. So you don't have to be perfect would be the lesson I hope they take from it. I love this. Look, thank you so much for, joining and I said a hugely enjoyable conversation. I look forward to many people benefiting from the lessons you've shared. All right. Thanks for having me.