Leading Professionals
Leading Professionals is a podcast hosted by Professor Laura Empson, in which she interviews senior leaders from some of the world's most successful professional organisations about the pressing issues they currently face. Each episode looks beneath the polished 'professional' veneer these firms present to the outside world to reveal the complex, messy and often surprisingly emotional realities of leading professionals. Drawing on a lifetime of research and advisory work, Empson makes sense of these challenges and draws out lessons for others. The show is aimed at professionals in leadership roles, or anyone who wants to understand their work and their organisation better.
Episodes
S4 EP6 - Leading Complex Change: Breaking Through Practical Barriers and Political Resistance
Guest: Dame Emily Lawson, formerly COO, NHS England, and Head of Number 10's Delivery UnitEmily has considerable experience of leading change in complex professional organisations, including leading the initial rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine programme across the UK. Laura asks: How do you manage to not be overwhelmed by complexity or discouraged by failure? How do you bring th
S4 EP5 - Becoming "Professional": How to Look, Sound, Act and Feel like a Professional
Guest: Paul Lewis, Firmwide Managing Partner of LinklatersIf you do not fit the conventional image of an elite professional, how do you persuade others that you are, and how do you learn to feel like one? Paul and Laura discuss his own very personal experiences of “becoming professional”. What can be done to help people from non-professional backgrounds to thrive within elite professional org
S4 EP4 - Considering the Future: How AI and Private Equity Will Change Professionals' Work
Guest: Michael Izza CBE, CEO (former) of ICAEWFor almost 20 years, Michael led the ICAEW, with more than 200,000 members in almost 150 countries. So he has a distinctively long-term and global perspective on the accounting profession. Focusing on the interrelated changes of Gen AI and PE ownership, Laura and Michael explore: What is already happening and what changes lie ahead?Website: h
S4 EP3 - Electing Leaders: How to Choose Your Leaders and How To Get Elected
Guest: Michael Ensser, Chair of Egon ZehnderLaura asks Michael: Why does a world leading firm of leadership consultants choose to elect their senior leaders, and how do their elections actually work? They discuss what really goes on behind the scenes of professional service firms’ carefully stage managed leadership elections. Website: https://www.lauraempson.comYouTube: https://www
S4 EP2 - Doing the Right Thing: How to Make Ethically Tough Decisions
Guest: Georgia Dawson, Senior Partner of FreshfieldsIf you are a lawyer you may be able to guess why Laura asks Georgia to explore the challenging theme of professional ethics with her.In a complex commercial, social, and political environment, how do you balance the competing interests of multiple stakeholders?How do you decide, what is the 'right' thing? And then, how do you make sure you do it?
S4 EP1 - Leading in Uncertain Times: How to Respond to Geopolitical Change and AI Disruption
Guest: Fabien Curto Millet, Chief Economist of Google. Fabien joins Laura to discuss how he and his team of economists anticipate, analyse, and understand the scale of change with which Google must contend. How does he lead his team of professionals, and manage himself, during these uncertain times? And what does he remember from when Laura taught him Strategy at Oxford 25 yea
S4 EP0 Welcome to Leading Professionals
Professor Laura Empson introduces key topics and guests from the upcoming series. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
David Bickford: Spies as professionals
What are the parallels between the worlds of espionage and professional services? Laura and Tony talk to David Bickford, previously General Counsel to MI5 and MI6, about his role as the agencies’ Legal Director and Under Secretary of State. They explore how to build trust when professionals are working remotely, how to collaborate when knowledge is shared on a need-to-know basis, and how to stop p
Katherine White: Leading discretely
Laura and Tony speak to Katherine White, the first Chief Talent Officer of global executive search firm, Spencer Stuart. They explore the challenges of being a senior leader when you are not a fee-earner, and of leading the so-called talent when the fee-earners themselves do not see you as the talent. Katherine explains how she built trust and influence, and how she learnt to add value quickly whi
Gianpiero Petriglieri: Coming out of the psychological closet
Gianpiero Petriglieri, Associate Professor at INSEAD, is ranked as one of the top 50 management thinkers in the world. Laura and Tony talk to him about the difficult emotions that often stay hidden and suppressed in organisations and individuals, and how leaders of professional organisations can become more effective when they engage more directly with these emotions. Hosted on Acast. See ac
June Sarpong: Leading as an outsider
Laura and Tony are joined by June Sarpong OBE, the BBC’s first Global Director of Creative Diversity. They explore how to bring about disruptive change in a large, complex and high-profile professional organisation, and how to get things done quickly in an environment when decisions are taken slowly. June explains how she managed to do all this as an outsider with no previous leadership
Chris Saul: Subtle power
Chris Saul is the former Senior Partner of the UK’s most prestigious law firm, Slaughter and May. Laura and Tony explore how leaders use subtle power to build consensus among partners in a professional organisation. They discover some of the secrets of how Slaughter and May has evolved successfully over more than a century, and managed to retain its powerful position at the heart of the UK’s econo
Steve Varley: Profiting from sustainability
Laura and Tony speak to Steve Varley, EY’s first Global Vice Chair for Sustainability. They find out how he was inspired by Greta Thunberg to try to build a bridge between environmentalism and capitalism, and the skills he used to make this happen. He explains how he created this role in EY to place sustainability at the heart of the firm’s business, and how he mobilised both colleagues
Welcome Back
Welcome back to Leading Professional People, the podcast that explores the most crucial leadership questions currently facing professional organisations. For this third series, Professor Laura Empson, who has dedicated almost 30 years to researching professionals and professional service firms, will be joined by a new co-host, Tony Hall, Lord Hall of Birkenhead, the former Director General of
Leadership in the spotlight
Empson & Morley speak to Tony Hall, Lord Hall, about his time as Director General of the BBC, and his many other high-profile roles. They examine what it is like to lead complex organizations with multiple groups of stakeholders under intense public scrutiny. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Leadership value chain
How do you build better leaders in a professional service firm? Empson & Morley speak to Russ Hagey, Worldwide Chief Talent Officer of Bain. They explore Bain’s self-reinforcing leadership development system, and the way “insurgency” is both encouraged and controlled to strengthen the system. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Ethics and leadership
Why do professionals do bad things? Empson & Morley speak to Professor Brooke Harrington of Dartmouth College, in the USA. They explore the factors which drive some professionals to behave unethically, and the organizational and societal factors which encourage it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Extreme collegiality
What is collegiality and how does it work in practice? Empson & Morley speak to Jill Ader, Chair of executive search and leadership advisory firm Egon Zehnder. They examine how to create an environment of mutual support, cultural consistency, and equality among peers. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Leadership duets
Can dual leadership be effective and how does it work in practice? Empson & Morley analyse these questions with the help of Barry Devereaux and Catherine Deane, Managing Partner and Chairof leading Irish law firm, McCann Fitzgerald, who have recently introduced a dual leadership structure. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Post-pandemic Professionalism
How can leaders help their professionals prepare for the challenges and opportunities of post-pandemic professional work? Empson & Morley explore this theme with Nick Owen, Chair of Deloitte UK. They consider how hybrid working is calling into question some well-established “truths” about the nature of professionalism. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for mo
Collaboration in a Cold Climate
How do you create and sustain collaboration when you no longer meet each other face to face? Empson & Morley discuss this with Kirsten Edwards-Warren, Executive Vice President EMEA for Compass Lexecon. They examine the distinctive culture, systems, and structures the firm has developed to encourage collaboration and how it continued to thrive during the pandemic. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com
Global versus Local
In a global professional organisation, how do you achieve alignment across national offices? Empson outlines one powerful method – social control – and Morley explores his experience of leading partners through the process of global integration. They talk to Philip Davidson, currently Global COO of KPMG about exercising power while walking the global/local tightrope. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com
Partnership versus Corporate
Empson explains how the culture of partnership is created and sustained while Morley highlights the challenges of growth and scale in this context. To examine the differences and similarities between leadership in partnerships and corporations, they talk to Sir Ian Davis, former Global Managing Partner of McKinsey and now Chairman of Rolls-Royce plc. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more
Ambition versus Reluctance
Professional people can be notoriously reluctant to see themselves as leaders. Empson & Morley explore what can be done to support professionals making the transition from full-time fee earner to leader. They examine the myth of “authenticity” with Professor Herminia Ibarra, of London Business School, globally renowned expert in leadership identity and career transitions. Hosted on Acast. See
Leadership in crisis
Empson outlines how a crisis changes the balance of power in professional organisations, but only temporarily. Morley explains the importance of adapting your leadership style as a crisis ebbs and flows. They interview Wim Dejonghe, Global Senior Partner of global law firm Allen and Overy, to find out how he has dealt with the Covid crisis. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more inf
Paradoxes of Leadership
Empson gets a call at midnight from a client asking for advice as a potential leadership coup gathers momentum. Morley & Empson discuss the paradoxes of leading professional people, including the paradox of autonomy and control. When your “followers” don’t like being told what to do, how do you get them to do anything? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Welcome to Leading Professional People
Professor Laura Empson and David Morley introduce their new podcast series ‘Leading Professional People’. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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