How to become a good leader
On a sunny Thursday morning in late April, 20 Bazaar readers gathered in the beautiful private dining room of Pavyllon at The Four Seasons Park Lane for an inspirational careers breakfast. Bazaar’s contributing features editor, Marie-Claire Chappet, was joined by the career coach and author of Women Who Work Too Much, Tamu Thomas, and Gabriella Braun, director of consultancy firm Working Well and the author of All That We Are: Uncovering the Hidden Meaning Behind Our Behaviour At Work, for a detailed discussion on the subject of executive leadership.
Guests gathered over coffees, pastries and delicious homemade granola with Greek yoghurt and seasonal berries, courtesy of the chefs of Michelin-starred Pavyllon, as the panel discussed the nuances of effective management in an ever-evolving working landscape.
The pair shared the wealth of their knowledge and experience on the most common mistakes leaders make – failure to delegate, crossing boundaries – and how best to combat these. They underlined the central foundation of leadership, which is power, and that the first step to being a good boss is fully comprehending the nature of this. "Leaders need to understand that they have outsized influence in their employee’s lives," said Braun. Thomas agreed, noting that we often bring to leaders echoes of our relationships with previous authority figures and what they have instilled in us at school.
As such, one of the surprising takeaways was not to be overly friendly with your team. "There’s a difference between being friendly and trying to be a close friend," warns Braun, who pointed out that the latter can too frequently involve crossing boundaries that may make your team uncomfortable. Understanding what these individual boundaries are is vital. "You have to get to know your team," said Thomas. "That’s how you can know how best to manage them."
"Your approach has to be bespoke," Braun agreed. "Learn how your team likes to work, and what is going on in their lives that may affect that, like any caring responsibilities. That is how you bring the best out of them." Thomas took this further, discussing the specificities of psychological safety and the vital importance of managers in this regard. "Your entire nervous system can be effected by this," Thomas warned, noting that your team cannot operate at their best if they are constantly in a uneasy psychological state, caused by erratic leadership.
One way of facilitating this understanding is both giving and soliciting feedback. "It is all about how you do this," advised Braun. "You can’t go to your employees and say, 'tell me if I’m doing a good job'. There’s a power imbalance; they are obviously going to say you’re doing a great job. You have to reframe this. Ask them what you can do for them to make work better. Ask them what they need from you."
The interplay between gender and leadership emerged as a hot topic. "We need to stop trying to be nice," said Thomas, in what became something of a rallying cry for the morning. The pair discussed the social conditioning of women to be likeable over actually stating what they want and need, and how these impulses hold us back as both team players and managers. "We must be prepared to let go of the childlike need to look like a ‘good girl’ and choose to be bold women instead. We need more bold women."
Despite this, both Thomas and Braun stressed the importance of humility in a leader, and how much the success of a manager is underpinned by having a reciprocal relationship with your team. Learning from your employees, as opposed to dictating to them, was unveiled as the secret ingredient to true leadership.
The morning was brought to a close with a sumptuous selection of eggs with bacon, smoked smoked or spinach with a comté cheese extraction, all on lightly toasted brioche; all the product of the delicious Pavyllon kitchen, under the stewardship of the esteemed French chef Yannick Alléno. Guests spoke with panelists and Bazaar editors and networked among themselves, the discussion never straying too far from the central theme of the day: the importance of good leadership.
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