Nottingham Business School Business Leaders

Nottingham Business School Business Leaders' Podcast Roundtable: From engineering graduates to business leaders. Reflections on leadership | Episode 34 Key takeaways Building your business network is important, even while still at uni. Colin says: “Networks are a bit like pensions – it’s never too early to start.” What is the most important skill for business leadership? Chris says: “How to make m...

Nottingham Business School Business Leaders Podcast Leading across borders at Fujitsu | Episode 33 Key takeaways International leaders need to be curious, to collaborate, and to understand cultural differences. Wherever leadership decisions are being made, it is important that there is a diversity of inputs. If you’re trying to create a team to deliver, having different viewpoints and experiences...

Nottingham Business School Business Leaders Podcast Neil Benson – A life in journalism | Episode 32 Key takeaways Neil Benson emphasises the need for leaders to adopt a more humble and wise approach, akin to Yoda from Star Wars, rather than the brash and assertive style of Han Solo. He asserts that there is no natural leader and successful leaders must invest time in learning and developing their...

Nottingham Business School Business Leaders Podcast David Lloyd - Leadership Lessons from 40 years in radio | Episode 31 Broadcaster David Lloyd may now be best known for founding a national radio station Boom Radio . But during a 40-year career he has had executive roles with LBC, Century, Galaxy and Virgin, As he tells Visiting Honorary Professor Mike Sassi in this episode of the Nottingham Busi...

Nottingham Business School Business Leaders Podcast Professor Edward Peck CBE - The performance and discipline of leadership | Episode 30 Professor Edward Peck deliberately wears a wristwatch that stopped working years ago. If he wants to know the time, the Vice Chancellor of Nottingham Trent University looks at his phone. He uses the broken watch to remind him that he’s at work – and he can’t all...

Nottingham Business School Business Leaders Podcast Errol Gardner - Why modern leadership is as much about EQ as IQ, at EY | Episode 29 International executive Errol Gardner has more than 100,000 people working for him – across 150 countries. And last year his side of the business generated more than ten billion pounds, for professional services firm EY (formerly Ernst and Young ). But as Vice Cha...

Nottingham Business School Business Leaders Podcast Debbie Hewitt MBE - Resilience, perspective and accountability: Insights from The FA's first female chair | Episode 28 Inspirational Debbie Hewitt has had a remarkable 40-year career in business. As Chair of the English Football Association and Vice President of world football, she is one of the most powerful people in the game. She is also non-e...

Nottingham Business School Business Leaders Podcast Sat Bains - Be disciplined and choose the path less trodden | Episode 27 It’s exactly 20 years since Nottingham chef Sat Bains was awarded his first Michelin star. His Restaurant Sat Bains with Rooms now has two Michelin stars and is one of the most respected fine-dining restaurants in Britain. Last night (March 28, 2023), in a ceremony at the Si...

Nottingham Business School Business Leaders Podcast Alan Morris - Adapting from entrepreneur to leader | Episode 26 Tech entrepreneur Alan Morris knew he was entering a competitive market when he launched IT outsourcing company Retail Assist, in 1999. But he preferred it that way. “I like the idea of competitive markets, because it means there is a market,” he tells Episode 26 of Nottingham Busine...

Nottingham Business Schools Business Leaders Podcast Sir John Peace - Leadership lessons from the former Chairman of Experian, Burberry and Standard Chartered | Episode 25 Businessman Sir John Peace says the best leaders are people who can communicate, take risks and adapt to change. But Sir John – who was Chairman at FTSE 100 companies Standard Chartered, Burberry and Experian – believes every tr...

Nottingham Business School Business Leaders Podcast Roundtable: Closing gender gaps in the workplace - Episode 24 It’s well-known that girls out-perform boys in GCSE exams. And A-Levels. And university studies, too. Young women are also much better communicators than their male counterparts, say educationalists. Yet Government figures show, on average, women still earn almost fifteen per cent less...

Nottingham Business School Business Leaders Podcast Lucy Marie Hagues MBE - Building better banking at Capital One | Episode 23 Banker Lucy Marie Hagues is a charismatic leader whose business skills have taken her right to the top of financial services company Capital One UK. But she still remembers the day when – as a junior member of staff – she was told her poor attitude was having a negative e...

Corporate lawyer Iain Blatherwick never intended to be a leader. But when the retiring Managing Partner at his law firm Browne Jacobson told colleagues there were no suitable internal candidates for the job, Iain recognised a challenge. Months later he was elected as the new Managing Partner – and went on to lead a decade of remarkable growth, during which the company’s annual turnover rocketed fr...

Prison governor Lynn Saunders worked every Christmas Day for twenty years. As the woman in charge of Europe’s biggest prison for sex offenders, she believed she had to lead from the front. “My staff in the prison had to go to work on Christmas Day – so I always worked on Christmas Day,” she tells the Nottingham Business School’s Business Leaders’ Podcast. “As a leader, you must be willing to get y...

Celebrity baker Selasi Gbormittah is preparing to combine the culinary skills he learned in Ghana with the business expertise he was taught in Nottingham… to open his own bakery. He tells the Nottingham Business School Business Leaders’ Podcast he wants his Selasi Bakery to be up and running, in London, in the next two years. The corporate banker – who attracted thousands of fans as he won through...

Broadcaster Dick Stone started his career as a teenager playing music on local hospital radio in Derby. Two decades later he was running the Smooth Radio stations that broadcast to 10 million listeners nationwide. Now – having taken on managing editor and group editor roles across both the Global and Capital national radio networks – he is in a perfect position to offer leadership advice. “I’m jus...

Banker Heather Melville remembers clearly the day she told senior colleagues at Royal Bank of Scotland about her idea to set up a women’s network for staff. “One male colleague said: What are they doing? Are they going to be talking about jam and burning their bras?” she tells the Nottingham Business School’s Business Leaders’ Podcast. More than a decade later, the innovative women’s network now h...

Respected lawyer David Williams spent almost three decades working his way up to the role of Chairman at of one of the country’s top 100 law firms Geldards. But, as he tells the Nottingham Business School’s Business Leaders Podcast, he is constantly having to battle shyness – and force himself to confront his worries. “If I've had success, it's come through challenging myself… putting myself in si...

The chief executive of 200 Degrees is proud he only had to make three redundancies during 18 months of the Covid pandemic and lockdown. Because Rob Darby – whose coffee empire employs 200 staff across shops, barista schools and a major wholesale business – guards jealously his organisation’s reputation as a caring employer. “It’s a two-way relationship. Without the staff’s hard work and graft we w...

Successful businesswoman Eileen Richards didn’t have a high-powered upbringing. But thirty years after she walked into a recruitment agency and asked to try as many temporary positions as possible, she is now one of the East Midlands most prominent business leaders. She has also been presented with an MBE by Prince Charles for the help she has given to other aspiring women business leaders. And in...

Ann Francke is one of Britain’s most high-profile women business leaders – and a passionate campaigner for gender diversity in the workplace. She has spent almost nine years as CEO of the Chartered Institute of Management, highlighting the business benefits of having more women in senior management. But her campaigning is also fired by her own personal experience as a woman executive in a world do...

Air Marshal Sir Baz North faced one of his greatest challenges in the aftermath of the Mull of Kintyre Helicopter Disaster when a Chinook flew into a hillside killing all 25 security officers on board. It was the biggest peacetime loss of life in the history of the RAF. And Sir Baz – who was a Chinook Special Unit Commander in Northern Ireland, where the helicopter was based – tells the NBS Busine...

Sam Thorne says Britain can rely on its artists to help guide the country through post-pandemic economic and cultural change. The director of the Nottingham Contemporary believes one of the biggest challenges for modern leaders is dealing with uncertainty. And his experience – he was director at Tate St Ives in Cornwall, before arriving in Nottingham – is that artists are peculiarly well-equipped...

Sarah Walker-Smith isn’t a conventional company chief executive. She runs one of Britain’s Top 50 law firms, with an annual turnover of more than £70m. But in the middle of the pandemic, the CEO of Shakespeare Martineau decided to sing to her 900 staff. Accompanied by a company partner on the piano, she recorded her own ‘Christmas single’ version of Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. “It was...

Healthcare leader Peter Homa believes the most important thing for any leader is to believe in what you’re doing – even if it means walking away from a job to avoid being compromised. As Director General of the Defence Medical Services, Peter has been in charge of health care for every member of the British military for almost two years. But he also spent a quarter of a century running three of Br...