“I’m now leading projects on longer-term strategy, and the programme has helped me in leading a team to work on strategic direction.”

My background

I was promoted from a country leadership role, where I was the UK lead for diagnostics, into a global role as the global diagnostics director for DNA Damage Response, three years ago. I have a background in pharmaceutical sales and joined AstraZeneca in a sales role almost eight years ago. I went from talking about drugs to oncologists in a sales capacity, to working on the diagnostics of the tests you need for these drugs. I now work in oncology pharmaceuticals, specifically on the tests that you need to have to understand the molecular analysis of ovarian cancer primarily, in order to prescribe the treatments that we manufacture.

I completed the Next-Level Leadership programme as I was preparing to grow into a bigger role in a growing area of my organisation. Diagnostics is a growing function in pharmaceuticals, and AstraZeneca is also growing, so the thinking was that I’d get a formal leadership qualification with an eye on leading bigger teams in the future. I’d led teams before doing the programme, but my leadership suggested that I get a robust, formal qualification and they recommended the programme at London Business School.

When researching the programme the content was really attractive to me in terms of the kind of leader I want and hope to be. I strongly believe in being a leader as a coach, but the concept of creating a safe environment, that Professor Dan Cable led us through, was new to me. The ethos that you can’t grow in an environment of fear, and that it’s okay to make mistakes as long as you learn from them, is something that I’ve subconsciously tried to do in the past. So the programme really hammered home what I felt already but wasn’t consciously thinking about, which was really stimulating.

Becoming a better leader

I’ve learned that if you invest time and energy in leadership, what you get back is magnified in your team. I’m now more drawn to leadership roles than I was before, and I’d like to lead bigger teams in future.

I’m now leading projects on longer-term strategy, and the programme has helped me in leading a team to work on strategic direction. You can’t really develop a strategy in isolation, so learning to be a better leader involves bringing people together to achieve that aim.

The programme took something I was relatively familiar with, which is coaching, and made it much more practical and meaningful for me in my current role. By using very light touch coaching methods from the programme, I’ve noticed a step-change in my team. I’ve been in this role for three years, but it’s only in the last six months since doing the programme that I’ve felt I don’t need to stress about everything all the time, because my team can cope with these things. It’s helped to free up my time, so everyone can benefit from me being a better leader of my team.

As a result of the programme, I’m now more consciously aware of myself as a coach as well as a leader for my team. If I don’t coach them, how are they going to grow, and become the best leaders? That’s really important. I’m also now more mindful of active listening, and not being so quick to jump to ‘solution-mode’, but actually understanding the problem or situation from the perspective of someone else.

If I were to recommend the programme to someone, I’d say that it’s been hugely positive in reaffirming that being a nice person, and focusing on the good things, is not a weakness. You can be a strong leader by empowering people; you don’t have to use the stick all the time, the carrot is probably more effective. Doing the programme has the potential to reframe your thoughts on yourself as a leader; you may already be a good leader, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be a better one.