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Welcome to The Boardroom Path, the essential podcast for aspiring and newly appointed Non-Executive Directors navigating the journey from executive leadership to the boardroom. Hosted by Ralph Grayson, partner at Sainty Hird & Partners, each episode offers insightful conversations with industry leaders, seasoned board directors, and governance experts. Our guests share practical strategies, valuable perspectives, and actionable advice on how to effectively transition into board roles, maximise your impact, and build a rewarding NED career.
[00:00:03] Ralph Grayson: Welcome to The Boardroom Path by Sainty Hird & Partners. I'm your host, Ralph Grayson, a partner in the board practice. In this series, we'll offer practical steps and useful perspectives for aspiring and newly appointed NEDs. Throughout its 30 year history, Sainty Hird has recruited senior board members across the City, Industry, the Public Sector and NGOs.
We're now also evaluating those boards, as well as coaching and mentoring those seeking to transition from an executive career into the boardroom. So we'll be speaking to some leading figures in the board advisory and NED world. Specifically, we'll seek their counsel about how and where to spend time and energy to make an effective transition into the boardroom. The goal is to equip recent and aspiring NEDs with tips, tactics and strategies to be most effective and build a successful career as a board director. In the process, we aim to help you to think more about who you are, how you operate and how you can make this work in the boardroom. My guest today is Harriet Heneghan, who specialises in working with board members and senior leaders navigating the psychological demands of board level leadership. With a background that spans investment banking, organisational consultancy, and executive coaching, she brings a rare combination of commercial credibility and deep behavioural insight to the boardroom.
Having begun her career at UBS in investment banking, Harriet understands firsthand the pressures of high stakes decision making, governance and performance at the top of organisations. She now works with board directors, chairs and executive teams to strengthen leadership effectiveness, strategic influence, and group dynamics, particularly at moments of transition, complexity, or heightened accountability. Harriet holds an MSC in Occupational Psychology from Birkbeck London, and is accredited in a range of psychometric and emotional intelligence assessments, including Hogan and EQI.
Her coaching approach is grounded in evidence-based psychology with a strong focus on self-awareness, judgement, power, and the interpersonal dynamics that shape boards. Through her work, Harriet helps board members lead with clarity, resilience, and impact, supporting them to navigate ambiguity, challenge constructively and perform at their best without losing sight of their values. Her insights into board leadership psychology make her a compelling voice on The Boardroom Path where the realities of leadership at the top are explored with honesty and depth.
Harriet, welcome. Let's just start with putting some colour maybe on that biography. Just talk us through your path into coaching and your particular interest in various aspects of that.
[00:03:05] Harriet Heneghan: Yeah, nutshell, what I'm trying to do is help people be their best. They're sort of more brilliant than they even think they can be. After all, if you're working with top level people, they've always already been incredibly successful. But underlying that is just a lifelong interest in why people are how they are and helping them actually. When I'm called a business psychologist, I always highlight the psychology bit. That's the bit that really fascinates me and I've applied that to business and over the yearsI've managed to bring out the best in myriads of people.
[00:03:36] Ralph Grayson: we've talked in the past about several different aspects of leading. We talked about self, we've talked about leading others, we talked about leading the organisation and we've also talked specifically around leadership in the boardroom. So I'm interested maybe just to start with what your thoughts are of any difference there might be in coaching somebody who's in a boardroom, where their role is one of influence as opposed to coaching somebody who's sitting in the C-suite where their role is one of authority, leadership hierarchy.
[00:04:09] Harriet Heneghan: As a purist coach, I would say there shouldn't be a difference in the way that you coach. Ultimately the most important thing to get success from coaching is that the individual wants to be coached and so I would say a board member normally is definitely going to be coming to you saying, I want some help with X or Y. Whereas actually in the Exec level and below, often it's someone that's in a higher hierarchy that's saying to them, you need some coaching. And then actually you've got to try and overcome this concept that they might be thinking, well, no, I'm not sure I do need some coaching. Or might want some help, but not necessarily on that.
So actually helping a board level person is from the get go slightly more straightforward sometimes. You've also got the difference between being a coach and a skills coach. A skills coach is really more like a trainer. They're telling you more like a mentor, they're advising you, and that, of course, still takes place.
But actually the work I try to do, because you get better, more transformative change, is to get people coming saying, "these are the issues I want to work on" and I then coach them without giving them actually a solution. So I'm not actually telling them what to do. I'm just being used as a sounding board, if anything.
[00:05:19] Ralph Grayson: And when you talk about skills, do you mean that in a functional sense or do you mean that in a behaviour sense? I.e. a lot of conversation and academic work around the difference between functioning boards and board members and dysfunctional boards and board members, is their behaviour and corollary to that is can you coach somebody to make that transition out of the C-suite and into the boardroom?
[00:05:45] Harriet Heneghan: Yes. To answer that question first, yes, you can. The skills we are looking at aren't so much the technical skills, are they anymore? I mean, I always say that a leader's main skill is their communication skill and that is a skill and that can definitely be taught, and trained, and practised.
In terms of the more purist sort of behavioural elements, then you are looking really at what's driving that person. You're getting underneath the skin a bit more. Almost sometimes a little bit to the unconscious, but nothing deep, dark. What is it that makes you so frustrated with the board or that makes them think that you are hurrying them into decisions? When actually you didn't have that intent but it's just in you and so we would, if someone came along to me and said, that's the feedback I've got. I realise I do it. I'm not really sure why I'm doing it, then we would work on that. It's behavioural, but it's a skillset.
[00:06:36] Ralph Grayson: How much of that is driven by self-awareness as opposed to being told you've been a successful C-suite operator, but that doesn't necessarily translate into the boardroom?
[00:06:47] Harriet Heneghan: We can raise our self-awareness through a number ofdifferent pathways, I suppose. And actually it depends on you as a person. So, if you think of the very bold leader who maybe is somewhat Teflon coated then feedback's pretty difficult to give them. And sometimes they're deemed uncoachable.
[00:07:05] Ralph Grayson: Does that mean they're not fit to be in a boardroom?
[00:07:08] Harriet Heneghan: With our personality profiles, I would put warning shots around someone who was very high on something, for instance, called fantasised talent. You know, if someone's got just too much of an ego, then yes, I'd be very wary of putting them forward for a senior leadership position.
[00:07:23] Ralph Grayson: There's a lot to unpick here. So as I understand it, you're operating at the intersection of psychology, communication / awareness, and then leadership. So before we dive into it, how do you define the role of feedback to somebody who's an aspiring NED or has arrived in the boardroom and now realise they could do a better job?
Yeah, the role is that it should help you be the best person you can be in the workplace in this situation. Obviously there should be themes. Feedback can come from one instance and that can get misunderstood quite easily. People tend to judge other people by the behaviour, the output, whereas we judge ourselves by our intention.
[00:08:11] Harriet Heneghan: So if we know that our intention was just to move things along because we're running out of time rather than being rude, we will judge ourselves in a good place. Whereas the receivers of that might see that as people being rude and not respecting them. So we've got to get to that understanding of where the behavior's coming from.
[00:08:29] Ralph Grayson: it's fascinating. So nobody joins a boardroom to do a bad job. Everybody goes in with good intentions. Yet a lot of academic research, in particular, and certainly anecdotal in my experience is that, the vast majority of people would say that in some way, their boards are dysfunctional or there are things that other people could do better, should do better if they were more team orientated or more self-aware.
Where does that dysfunctionality come from?
[00:08:57] Harriet Heneghan: It's almost like it's competitiveness, isn't it? It's almost like, you have a problem that people are trying to outdo each other or be smarter or the loudest voice in the room, and they're not often the wisest, actually. The wisest and that make more the considered decisions are the ones that sit back and hear a lot of that hot air potentially going on and then can make a much more balanced decision.
[00:09:22] Ralph Grayson: So I've heard you say in the past, leaders need to show it as well as feel it or think it. So why does communicating effectively, an intention matching impact, why does that matter so much today? Why is it important that you demonstrate what you believe?
[00:09:44] Harriet Heneghan: There's almost three elements to this, you've got to say it. That's the lip service. You've got to show it. But then also I suppose added to that, there's do your actions work with it.
So, a more straightforward example of that would be, you know, I have an open door policy. I want people to be able to come into my office and tell me what's going on and you can really believe that. And when you tell people that you can look like you believe that, but actually if every time someone or a certain person comes to your door and you're sort of like, oh, they whitter on a bit,and so you sort of like, not, not now, not now, come back later.
[00:10:18] Ralph Grayson: That's not an open door policy or you're not dealing with that particular instance very well. So what needs to happen there is for you to be able to say to that person, I have got an open door policy, but it doesn't mean you can come in here and just whitter on aimlessly. So how do you balance that with authenticity? People talk a lot about authenticity, particularly in the boardroom. How do you coach the best out of people?
[00:10:40] Harriet Heneghan: Well, to me, authenticity is about looking at what is the bright side of your personality. So I'm going into sort of jargon there. But if we think about the bright side of your personality being you on your best behaviour, and the dark side being that you know sometimes you get things wrong, but you need to be aware of that.
[00:10:56] Ralph Grayson: So that's a great place to start then as we get into this. So let's start with leading yourself, because I think that goes to the heart of what we've been talking about so far. So we touched on insight, we've touched on congruence, and we've touched on behaviour and behavioural change. So when those leaders, either in the boardroom or in the C-suite, which the board are trying to get the best out of, when they receive that feedback, that their impact doesn't match their intention, if I've understood you correctly. What are the first steps in helping them close that gap? What do you do as a coach? Where do you start?
[00:11:33] Harriet Heneghan: Making sure that they believe that that's the case, and if they don't, trying to understand why they don't think that feedback is correct. And consequently, what is the issue? where does the issue lie? Because for me, as a coach, if I'm not working with what they really want to work on, it's highly unlikely that we'll produce the real, what I call, intrinsic desire to change. They've got to really want to make that change.
[00:11:59] Ralph Grayson: And do you have to validate that data from the other people then, before you start a coaching engagement? Would you ask for feedback from their peers?
[00:12:07] Harriet Heneghan: can do, yeah. Yeah. that's often a way that it's done, especially at an exec level or even exec minus one. You might get that from boards. It's normally a bit more anecdotal. You can use things like personality profiles that should give you a very objective view like the one I use Hogan. Where it gives you this bright side and dark side and it's so complex this arena. Humans are always trying to look for sort of almost a binary, I do this or I don't do that, and it's just not like that. We are looking at a myriad of different interactions and so having a proper coaching session where you're using really an hour, if not more, to properly get yourself into that place where you are really listening to yourself and reflecting, with the help of a coach is just so important.
[00:12:54] Ralph Grayson: You've also, I think, in the past touched on the use of video to actually get people to see themselves almost, is it an outside body experience? I don't know what the right analogy would be.
[00:13:02] Harriet Heneghan: Well, these days I think people are, well, senior execs anyway have often used videoas a way of communicating, they see themselves in the media as well. But yes, video, with immediate playback is a very powerful form of feedback because they see themselves as they actually are, rather than how they think they are.
And actually, I still meet very senior people who never look at the playback of their town hall or their...
[00:13:29] Ralph Grayson: Give us a couple of real life examples, if you can. What have been the realisation moments where somebody's gone? "Gosh, Harriet, I had no idea."
[00:13:36] Harriet Heneghan: Working with a CFO in the insurance worlda few years ago. A lady who was the only lady on the board and you could see she had frustrations. When I met her, the way she dressed, the way she came across, she was a highly colourful woman and enthusiastic and passionate. And yet for her, she was feeling that she needed to go into her investor relations talks being highly serious. And in fact, that was what the PR team that she'd been working with had told her that she needed to be and of course she needed to have that seriousness on certain topics. But we work with still allowing that authentic self, the good side of her to come through.
And actually, once we started doing that, people noted that she was becoming a breath of fresh air in rather a sort of staid grey, dare I say boring, environment and people listen to her more.
[00:14:33] Ralph Grayson: So when that feedback challenges somebody's self perception, right or wrong, i.e. I thought I was inspiring, but actually I'm viewed as distant. How do you help them integrate that without them being defensive and saying, "I'm not, everybody else is wrong and I'm right."
[00:14:54] Harriet Heneghan: It's through the questions, asking the questions. I mean, the questions that spring to mind there is what do you actually think? What is it that you'd like to be? Why do you think it is that people are seeing you like that? and actually often, it comes out that there's something else deeper that's driving. So even though they feel they're being, how they want to be seen as inspiring, actually something else is preventing that from happening and often that's unconscious bias.
[00:15:22] Ralph Grayson: I think what's interesting coming back to this transition out of the C-suite, into the boardroom, is this may be the first time that people have been surrounded by a table full of peers. There isn't a hierarchy and that is a different demonstration of effective leadership. It's a different demonstration of teamwork. So you can't draw on their experiences because it's out of context.
Maybe they've done the first or second board meeting and they're told actually, you're not contributing too much or you're contributing too much and you're taking it too much hot air because that's the way you managed when you were in the C-suite. How do you develop that theme with people?
[00:16:03] Harriet Heneghan: It's simply by asking them, what's going on? How are you experiencing that? You go into the relationship with the person who's direct, if it's just one person that's giving you that feedback, what's going on between you and them? Jumping back a bit to you saying around the, the lack of hierarchy within the boardroom. Actually, I think that's across the board now. If you think of what leadership used to be, it used to be this sort of very hierarchical powerful do as I say, almost autocratic, not quite, but.
[00:16:31] Ralph Grayson: Narcissistic, I was going to use.
[00:16:33] Harriet Heneghan: Yeah, there's something around that, isn't it? Whereas now it's, not least because of the diversity world. It's like, everyone's equal sort of, and actually I think the thing to remember there is everyone is equal but in different areas of life or in different areas of the working place. Some people are better at doing other things or some people have that responsibility, so they are going to have to hold ranks, so to speak, or be the one that's brave enough, or visionary enough, to go right, we are going in this direction.
[00:17:03] Ralph Grayson: From your vast experience around all of this,what are the psychological patterns that stop people accepting and adjusting to that feedback about themselves?
[00:17:15] Harriet Heneghan: Well, I talked about the fan size talent that would be, an obvious one. At the other extreme, you have what's called levels of adjustment, which in layman's terms is more how confident is someone, how much self-esteem do they have?
You come across people who are operating where they've actually got quite low adjustment, but they've built a sort of armour up around them to not be completely their authentic self. So you see people there not saying what they really feel. So they're not actually giving feedback. This is why bullies, if we're going to use that word, succeed because people don't actually almost stand up to them and say, no, look, that's not on.
And that's the trouble with power dynamics coming into play. You just need to be able to tell people that this is how I am observing this situation, and I totally respect, I want to hear how you observe it and then let's come to a good conclusion. And obviously it's not just two people, it's a number of people and let's move forward. If I'm going to be binary there, and I use this a bit with the sort of fantasised talent and the examples I've given before, often that can slow things down. So I suppose if I draw on what I've said earlier and looking at what you're asking me now, it's having the strength of mind to say, yes, I know we've got to keep moving forward and keep a good enough pace. But we can't let that just rush us into a sort of fight or flight reaction. We've really got to allow ourselves to give it a considered response, and sometimes that actually means having a break within a board meeting, for instance if suddenly it's sort of like, no, we need to go and think about this, and I can't do that whilst we're all sitting here in the room together.
And that's where a good chair comes in, of course.
[00:19:02] Ralph Grayson: I was just about to jump in there and say do you think there's a particular role for coaching of a chair? Chair is primus inter pares. The chair is there, if you like, as the conductor of the orchestra to get the best sound coming out of the board. Where does that resonate with you?
[00:19:16] Harriet Heneghan: Yeah, we've talked about this concept of,is the chair leading within a board or, well, no, you shouldn't have leadership because everyone's there as equals. Well, it is a form of leadership and actually their role is to absolutely almost act as a coach themselves, isn't it?
[00:19:31] Ralph Grayson: That's a great analogy. like that.
[00:19:33] Harriet Heneghan: Yeah, because they're sort of there thinking, right? What are the good questions I can ask? You know, I might not necessarily have the answers, but I've got all these experts around me, depending on what it is, what problem we're solving at the time, that we need to allow people because we want to get the best out of them. And actually if people are feeling inhibited or a bit too full of themselves. Again, to use that binary sort of distinction, we won't necessarily get that. We won't achieve that.
[00:19:59] Ralph Grayson: Quite often I hear stories of newly appointed board members who are suddenly in awe of everybody else around them or in awe of this chair, and either they don't feel they're heard, they don't feel they've got anything to contribute, or they don't know when to put themselves forward. So how can you coach that?
[00:20:19] Harriet Heneghan: Well, this is the self-esteem. Suddenly they've done really, really well and then suddenly they're down back at the bottom of the pile, aren't they?
For me now coming up with a solution, I'd liken it to you're starting off going from primary school to secondary school and there's some new things to learn and there's new ways of operating and you're not necessarily going to be expected; in fact, you'd probably be seen as being cocky if on day one you sort of start trying to rule. But you've still got to be assertive. I think a lot of what we've spoken about so far, actually, comes down to having a good level of assertiveness. You can't be walked over, but you've still got to get your point of view. So I mean, that's often a theory that I land up discussing with people at senior levels.
[00:21:00] Ralph Grayson: Let's come back quickly to the theme of gender, because we touched on it a little bit earlier. You've spoken about different expectations in leadership through gender. So when that feedback touches on you are too assertive or you're not assertive enough. How do you help women navigate these issues? Because that's particularly sensitive.
[00:21:22] Harriet Heneghan: It is.
[00:21:23] Ralph Grayson: How should women NEDs think about these cliches of wokeism as well?
[00:21:26] Harriet Heneghan: Yeah, I mean, at a senior enough level they're normally aware of these sort of things, and quite frankly, they've got to where they've got to and so actually, unless they mention it, unless they mention that they think it's a gender issue, I won't point that out to them. So it's only if they come to me and say, look, actually I'm the only female, or I'm a minority in a situation, and I think they're not getting the best out of me as a result.
I wouldn't necessarily jump in with that. A good coach shouldn't do that anyway because you are then leading the horse.
[00:22:00] Ralph Grayson: Are there particular exercises that you can work with on that? I mean, I'm probably making that sound too mechanistic.
[00:22:07] Harriet Heneghan: Absolutely. If for instance someone was finding someone particularly domineering, you can, within the coaching,almost role play it. If they find the concept of role playing a bit too cringey, you can actually almost imagine that objects or perhaps characters sometimes I've been known to takepieces of Lego. As in characters and you're like, right, okay, you are this person. That's the person that you are finding too domineering. Really show me through moving them or run me through the scenario and that can really help people draw out what's going on.
[00:22:43] Ralph Grayson: So it's also forcing people to think about talent in a much more abstract way. Both the individual as well as the peer group.
How do you make that more systematic then? How do you get all of that to hum? Back to my orchestra if you like.
[00:22:57] Harriet Heneghan: A good coaching session will start with an issue that needs to be resolved and you'll ask them right from the get go, what are you looking for? And if that's for instance, in that situation of having a conversation with that dominant person, you may have role played it or, come to the conclusion of what it is, what message it is that they want to give them.
They will set their own goals. Again, it's not really for a coach to start saying, we think, come to me next session in a month's time or whenever having done that because they've got to really want to do it. We are really working on this intrinsic belief, desire.
[00:23:32] Harriet Heneghan: I'm just going to explain why I keep saying that, because so often people know what to do, okay? Cognitively, their brain is telling them what to do. But emotionally they can't do it. So we are really digging deep into what is driving an individual's behaviours and the most obvious example of that is the eating. So many of us know not to eat too much or to not to eat too many of the unhealthy foods. And yet we still do, because something's driving us to.
[00:24:04] Ralph Grayson: Let's just turn that into the team dynamic. It may be that it's not in the gift of the individual to solve the problem by their own self-awareness, by self change, they actually become more aware of the role they're playing within the team. And there is some broader team dysfunctionality.
So let's say that we've had an external board appraisal and that external board appraiser has gone to the chair, the chair has shared it with the board members, and here are our weaknesses as a collective, rather than as a group of individuals. How can somebody like you coach a board member to be a better team operator in that respect against external benchmarks of competence?
[00:24:49] Harriet Heneghan: Yeah. you can go in and coach the board as a whole.
[00:24:52] Ralph Grayson: Okay. That's interesting. I never heard that before. So talk to me a bit more about that.
[00:24:55] Harriet Heneghan: Yeah.
You follow a very similar process as you would for one-on-one and this is where I'm saying a chair could do this, basically what a chair is doing, a good chair would do that. Because you are really saying, come on, what could we do about that? And as a good team giving each other that feedback. Almost coaching each other and a lot of them will know that and be doing it anyway. They will have done it to be as successful as they are because gone are the days of just do that.
[00:25:23] Ralph Grayson: Let's run with that a little bit further then. So how do you help those leaders, those board members, adapt their communication to project authority, project influence, without reverting to executive power?
[00:25:42] Harriet Heneghan: That's the self-belief. The real self-belief in being brave enough to say what you feel. And actually, do you know what, in terms of leading self, it can be brave enough to say what you feel about yourself to a coach. So, some people say that a coaching conversation is you're having a conversation that you know you should be having with yourself. But you haven't been able to have it. And so you use this coach as a sounding board or the coach might recognise that and dig a bit deeper into that area. And I think that honesty, which of course, honesty, integrity, huge part of what a board is now. If I think back to was it Volkswagen where the emissions?
[00:26:24] Ralph Grayson: Yeah.
[00:26:25] Harriet Heneghan: It's like people could not feed up what they really felt about what was going on there.
[00:26:31] Ralph Grayson: Well, willful blindness, I think is an expression that's been used particularly with reference to VW that, for whatever reason, the board as a collection of individuals and as the body, the board, they all choose not to accept what was in front of them. And that, again, needs a self-awareness, and a moral north star that the individual then has to project so that becomes the culture of the board.
And how does a new board member coach themselves, or how do they get the best out of their coach to be able to stand up and say, "no, sorry."
[00:27:06] Harriet Heneghan: Well, you ask them, how are you going to do this? Are you the sort of person that wants to sort of stand up as an individual? And some people will do that, but some of them, normally, it's about forming alliances. Which again, sounds a bit tactical actually, but that's maybe the reality is that, you know, who else is experiencing this? How are you finding it? How are you finding these board meetings going? And they'll tell you, oh I think they're going really well. That's funny you should say that. Cause actually I feel I'm not being heard. So you've given them a chance to say what they feel is needed before you come in with your opinion, your view, which in your mind is the solution. And of course it then goes on and is refined and then hopefully you find a solution that that fits all.
[00:27:49] Ralph Grayson: Which brings us back to the great cliche of everybody moving out of the C-suite and into the boardroom. Of the balance between noses is in, but fingers out. And that balance between oversight and involvement. How would you help coach somebody to understand that nuance to bring out the best of themselves in terms of their skills, but not falling back on their old executive experience?
[00:28:16] Harriet Heneghan: Okay, so there's an example that I heard of not so long ago of a Chief People Officer joining a board of an insurance firm and clashing massively with the current CPO of that insurance firm. From what I heard, it was very poor NED behaviour. There's a big thing within coaching that you don't actually, it's almost too direct, to say why. Because it sends someone into almost like a fight or flight situation where they, their brain almost shuts down and they become defensive.
So you are really much more subtly working around what's going on here. How did that happen? The fight or flight reaction, you asked me about the psychological patterns before, comes up time and time and time again. Our behaviour is very emotional. It's being driven by the sort of the amygdala as the neuroscientists call it, which is just more the easy route. The sort of habitual patterns. So let's look at why we think that was happening and what can you change? How can you prevent that from happening again?
[00:29:16] Ralph Grayson: Can you coach somebody on how to read the room then?
[00:29:19] Harriet Heneghan: Yes.
[00:29:20] Ralph Grayson: And what tools would you give somebody? Because somebody's come out, let's say for example, they've come out of the C-suite that's different to the boardroom and reading the room and knowing back to your, who wants to ask the awkward question like I do. You know, I want to ask this question, but should I? Nobody else has asked it. When do I know when to step in?
[00:29:36] Harriet Heneghan: Okay. So, thinking back to a podcast you did previously last year with Rupert Jones where he was saying a lot of people these days can get promoted on technical ability. I would've thought anyone that finds themselves an exec committee or board level should be able to read the room. That's how they've got there. So if someone's got there and they can't, you can work with them on that. If you are someone that doesn't read the room, often it's because you are just downloading your ideas. You're not seeing how they're being received, and that's such a key part of what communication is. Someone said to me the other day, communication is the response you elicit. It is not what you think you said. It's actually what has landed.
[00:30:26] Ralph Grayson: I think that needs a certain amount of self-awareness as well, because we all talk about being a good board member being T-shaped i.e. they have particular skills, experience, knowledge, the main expertise, but they're not only there for that narrow knowledge, it's also more broadly what I can add to the board outside of my comfort zone, maybe even asking the obvious questions.
[00:30:49] Harriet Heneghan: But that does need an understanding of reading the room and knowing when it's appropriate to ask that question. Back to the cliche, you've got two ears and one mouth for a reason, right? And the side, I don't want to call them side conversations because again, that sort of almost sounds covert. But actually I think if you know that your intention is right to go and have some pre or post one-on-ones or smaller groups, if it's a big board, then actually you're probably going to, if you feel that someone has got something to say and they're not saying it, that's a way of eliciting it.
[00:31:21] Ralph Grayson: So when that board feedback is perhaps a bit more nuanced, silence, resistance. How can you help NEDs think how to interpret that behaviour in the boardroom?
[00:31:34] Harriet Heneghan: Don't jump to conclusions.
[00:31:35] Ralph Grayson: Again, it's back to the board culture, isn't it?
[00:31:37] Harriet Heneghan: It's back to board culture and the individual, because there's some people who, again, I'm being too simplistic about this, but who are far too happy to put forward their point of view, and actually some who actually have really good ideas and, find it harder to put them across.
[00:31:53] Ralph Grayson: You've coached a lot of leaders, no doubt, through some major inflection points in their professional lives. Without being too direct or indiscreet, what's the most meaningful transformation you've seen that began with a single piece of feedback?
[00:32:10] Harriet Heneghan: At one of the big, four accountancy firms and, someone was looking to become partner. They were on the verge of being my partner. And I've been asked to come in and work with them because the feedback they had been given was, our clients love you, but we have a problem. Nobody internally wants to work with you. You know, it could have been a real deal breaker and it was almost like he's not going to make partner. And I worked with him then, and then he asked me to come back and work with him when he had been promoted and had then been asked to become a regional partner.The real transformation came having seen the feedback that internally he was getting of being selfish, arrogant, all these sort of things. He was preparing a welcome speech to the new grad intake. And he was like, it's just so boring and he typically got the, "this is what our organisation is", "that's how many of us there are", and "these are our values".
And I was like, okay, well what do you think they're really going to want to know? They're like, day one, practically straight from university. I was like, what was it like for you? What? And he's like, well, I want to know what their lives are like and I said, "come on, what's that story that you and I know so well?"
And he told them how he got where he got to. He felt like he was actually saying something of note. He was being relatively, humble, or self-deprecating by admitting that he'd had that vulnerability and that he'd turned it around. And now hopefully he was a more awesome leader but they would be the judge of it sort of thing.
Which was a real joy for me to go. Cause that was over a time frame of probably nearly 10 years actually.
[00:33:45] Ralph Grayson: Wow. 10 years.
[00:33:46] Harriet Heneghan: Yeah.
[00:33:47] Ralph Grayson: So from all of your experience over these years, with these number of board members and exec members, is there one behavioural change you think needs to happen? And is there one dysfunctionality that you've seen again and again? Are there any rhythms, patterns?
[00:34:05] Harriet Heneghan: The dysfunction one is talking too much.
[00:34:07] Ralph Grayson: Simple as that. One mouth, two ears.
[00:34:09] Harriet Heneghan: Yeah. and as we are becoming more professional within the boards, it doesn't mean that you can't allow the real person to come in and to get to know those people and where they come from and really understand them. So yes, you've got to be professional, but you can still have social interactions and I think that's important and actually something you and I have spoken about before you know.
[00:34:34] Ralph Grayson: Well, and as many guests on this podcast have said the most important bit of any board ritual is the dinner before the board meeting.
There you go. You can see very different interactions in a social setting to the way that you do in the formal boardroom. So if I'm a chair or a company secretary listening to this, I'm thinking, gosh, there's more I could do to create a better culture or behaviour around the boardroom and I feel there's a role that coaching could play in that. Just pull this together for us, Harriet,what should they be thinking, I should be employing a coach? Either for individuals or as a collective?
[00:35:14] Harriet Heneghan: We're in a world where it's fiercely competitive and we need to be one step ahead and a great way of helping you to do that is to get some external feedback about the behaviours of individuals and of your coach and the process is very straightforward. It's about finding the right coach, making sure that there's a chemistry, but it's that unspoken "do we want to have dinner with each other?" " Do we respect each other enough?"
People used to say,do we enjoy it? And actually sometimes I think coaches then were brushed off as being too woolly. A good coach will be robust while still being compassionate.
Constructive challenge. Yeah.
[00:35:51] Ralph Grayson: Fascinating. Let's try pull this to a conclusion. So where do people read more? Listen more? Think about the role of a coach and coachee, and indeed, if somebody wants to follow you, where do they follow you? How do they connect with you?
[00:36:11] Harriet Heneghan: You know, my door is always open. But yes, get in touch with Sainty Hird in the first instance.
[00:36:16] Ralph Grayson: And you're on LinkedIn and they can connect with you there.
[00:36:18] Harriet Heneghan: Yeah hopefully, you've got a slight feel for me, even just from today's podcast and I love being able to help people unpick their challenges and find them the right coach.
It may be me, it may be someone else I know.
[00:36:34] Ralph Grayson: Lots to think about there. Thank you so much for the time.
[00:36:37] Harriet Heneghan: Nice job, thank you.
[00:36:38] Ralph Grayson: I hope that you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and have found it helpful when thinking about how to approach your own path to the boardroom. If you would like to push this a little bit further, Sainty Hird runs a bespoke one to one programme designed specifically to this end. For more information, please visit our website saintyhird.com, follow us on LinkedIn, and subscribe to the Boardroom Path to receive new episodes. Thank you for listening.