On May 7th 2019, a selection of the Private Client Global Elite arrived at Home House, Marylebone, London to participate in the first Leadership Day.

The day combined a mixture of keynotes from leaders within the government and the highest judicial office and practical leadership tips from prominent academics, consultants, Managing Partners and Single Family Offices.

Dr Ben Hardy, MBA, MPhil, PhD (Cambridge), Fellow at the University of Cambridge, Senior Lecturer in Public Policy and Management, SOAS

Dr Ben Hardy, Senior Lecturer at SOAS, brought interaction and intrigue to the Global Elite Leadership Day. Focusing on leading teams, Dr Hardy challenged the group to think about what goes into creating a successful team, including who you want on your team.

Pointing out the seemingly obvious, it is a natural bias to want to include people similar to yourself on your team. However, Dr Hardy took the time to emphasise that the more socially diverse your team is, the better the results you can achieve, bringing different perspectives, creativity and adaptability to the outcome.

Interestingly, Dr Hardy also pointed out the importance of process behind team tasks. When projects are unsuccessful, you take time to understand why. But when projects are successful, rarely do we reflect and document which processes were implemented to succeed. If this were done, we could help to perfect leadership in teams going forward.

After all, every task is a bundle of processes and processes have certain features. Think about your last task: What do you want the process to look like and where can you make most progress?

Garnering the most attention was Dr Hardy’s reference to psychological safety. Psychological safety is a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes. Do you create a psychologically safe environment for team members to speak up? The biggest tip Dr Hardy left us with is to “say the second thing that comes into your head, not the first,” as this tends to be reasoned and reflective.

Ultimately, getting team processes right can produce substantial productivity gains. Think about how you set your teams up, how you can make them psychologically safe and how you can learn from one another.