The Heart & Soul of Leadership
Zoe Holland MBE, Group Chief Commercial Officer, Fletchers Solicitors about gaining balance, finding your heart led passion and making the impossible possible.
Zoe Holland MBE, Group Chief Commercial Officer, Fletchers Solicitors about gaining balance, finding your heart led passion and making the impossible possible.
Listen & watch
Transcript
Transcript
Select a chapter to read along. Use “Play this clip” to jump to that moment.
Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do. Okay, so I am a very busy mum of three adult children. I am Chief Commercial Officer at a law firm group and we're about a thousand, just over a thousand people within our organisation now. I run a charity as well. called Silk Elephant, which is all about delivering simple acts of kindness to people all over the UK. And sometimes we also deliver abroad.
And in addition to that, I'm also an executive coach. So I coach a number of women in leadership, both within Fletchers, which is where I work, as well as external to that, helping them to find their common purpose, their passion, help them find time for themselves and look after themselves. And I'm very passionate about those coaching sessions. There's a real privilege when I do that work. That's how it feels to me to share an hour with somebody in an intimate way.
I speak, so I speak on women in leadership. I talk a lot around heart and soul in leadership. What does that mean? Why is that so powerful and important? And then What do I do outside of that? I have a beautiful five-year-old wirehaired Vizsla called Ella, and she is a joy in my life. And I like to spend lots of time just being still and smelling nature when I'm out and about with her.
Wow. Sounds like perfection. Not always. No, not always. It sounds lovely. And most of the time it's all brilliant. There are times when it doesn't take very much to spin the wheel just a little bit too fast. You know, it's busy having a big family and work and external stuff and community stuff. It can be a juggle. But I have a beautiful and supportive network of both family and just amazing women that support me in that.
So they're the people I reach out to when it just feels a bit crazy.
and I reach out and I've learned that I think through life and career, the women who really champion you and support you and the ones that you can just make that quick call to or a WhatsApp voice note to say please, I'm really struggling. So yeah, the importance of that support network is really… What's your favourite of all of those things if you were to pick a favourite? Oh, an absolute favourite I think would be my executive coaching on a one-on-one.
It is a really intimate space and I think so many women almost need permission to get balance in life and the joy of spending that time with them is really helping them unlock that they don't actually need permission to do that. that it's okay to take stock. It's actually okay to get balance in life, whatever that looks like for you. I think also it's really unlocking their real heart-led passion. Where does that come from?
And how can you weave that into both work and life and community? So yeah, I think it would be that. It's a really… as I use the word privilege and I use that a lot when I talk about coaching it feels a really privileged space and it's joyous when you see people really grow. When you see you know one of those women decide they're going to have a sacred Saturday which is just for them and you know 12 months later that sacred Saturday remains in situ.
When you've worked with you know somebody who you know their real passion is actually going out into the community and it might be just working with elderly people or it could be a whole range of things and finding three or four months in that they've really established a link with their local community and that's giving them real joy. So I think it would be that. And the charity work as well, that's also really immensely rewarding.
in a different way. That's just knowing that you're touching people's lives with something really simple that's been created by another individual. So that's what the charity does. We have a team of hundreds of volunteers and they make and create small gifts for other people, whether that might be a handmade heart, whether that might be… It could be all sorts of things, but hearts are a very central part of the charity. And when they are received the other end, just the connection of that between two people.
So that fills my soul in a different way. How did you come up with the idea for the charity? So it was, as a result, it was a time of grief. So my father died in December 2019. And during that 18 month journey, I really The moments where I felt really supported by people were those small acts of kindness that people did for us, whether that was dropping around some soup, you know, taking me out for coffee, all sorts of different things.
But the one, the most powerful, simple act during that time was on the Palatine Ward at the Christie. So Christie is a cancer hospital and there is a specific ward called the Palatine Ward for rare forms of blood cancer. And my father was on there for 16 weeks consecutively without being able to leave his room because you have to be very isolated during that time. But there was a little tiny community area at the end of the ward and I went down one day just to take a breath of fresh air.
Just to take stock and just feel a bit of the enormity of where we were at. And this young woman who at the time probably would have been 19, a young lady called Katie, simply made me a cup of tea and handed me a handmade heart that she'd made herself. And I'm going to get a little bit emotional at this point. And it was such a touching thing to do because actually without a lot of exchange of words, it was really powerful.
It was one woman to another saying, I got you. it was one woman to another just sharing the grief in that moment. So I really cherished that. So after my father died, I wanted his death not to be in vain, as a lot of people do when they do things after people die, and they do charity-based things. But I wasn't quite sure in the early stages of grief what that looked like.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, I was over in India.
and had a moment and thought, you know what? I would really love to create a charity that recreates that simple act. And how do we get people to make hearts for other people? And I literally came back from India and two weeks later we were in COVID. And I set up the charity the second week of COVID. And the initial part of the charity was really focused on, if we remember that time, There were a lot of people who were very poorly in hospital through COVID, but also other illnesses and members of the family weren't able to go and see them.
And I wanted to be able to connect the family with the patient. And so I started this activity essentially on Facebook, reaching out saying, I want to create this charity. What I really love to do is get people making handmade hearts in pairs. one stays with the family and the other one goes to the patient in hospital. And so it started, and within a really short space of time, probably within, I don't know, a couple of weeks, things started to happen.
I had ladies coming forward, parcels started to arrive, and then it was, oh gosh, how am I going to do this? And over the period of the next, I don't know, couple of months,
We went from me and four people at home over my kitchen table to eventually we got to six to seven hundred creative volunteers, let's call them, who were all making at home and delivering to us and we were distributing across the UK. And then it expanded from there. We went then into a certain network of what I called kindness ambassadors across the country. I reached out and said, would any ladies like to help me coordinate because this is getting too big?
And there was eight amazing women who came forward and said, yeah, I'd love to do this. And we distributed. So we distributed care packages and love hearts. We did handmade elephants for children, particularly. Never forget that you are beautiful and courageous and loved. Sorry, because I get emotional. How? You're such a good person. Which thing? It was just… Yeah, I do. It just happened. So over Covid, we ended up delivering around 110,000 gifts.
Are you kidding me? 110,000? I spent most of Covid badly trying to homeschool my children. I barely got through the day. I mean, how you managed to do this plus everything else? I mean, I'm in awe. It was fantastic. It was crazy. But you know, I think when you really find your soul passion, and in that moment that was about grief and love and wanting other people to feel just that really simple moment between myself and Katie on the ward, the impossible just becomes possible.
It just does. You find a way and I think when you have that real passion,
and soul with it, other people feel it too. And it becomes a really powerful, just a really powerful thing. But I learned so much about women and leadership during that charity. You know, these were, I mean the creative volunteers were just phenomenal, but the joy was both for the maker and the receiver because there were so many elderly ladies who were lonely at home who were creating, making from whatever they could get their hands on and their joy was knowing they were contributing, knowing they were part of a community and knowing that they were spreading what they were doing to the other side and then obviously the receiver on the other side feeling that they were connected both to family but also other people in community so it was really powerful but in terms of just women and leadership those eight kindness ambassadors you know these were ladies that hadn't been to any fancy leadership conference or you know they they hadn't had training or been in a boardroom or necessarily managed people or anything like this before um but just the power of people together and the power of their passion to do it found them a way um so it was an extraordinary time And, you know, I think that's really left the mark on me around the joy of women together and the joy that it gives when you can give something back through whatever that might be.
So, yeah, that was an emotional part of the conversation. Well, I love that.
What would your advice be for anyone that's maybe thinking about whether it's a charity or a different kind of project, like actually taking it from a passion in your heart out into the world, into something more real? I think for me a lot of, you know, getting it off the ground, my initial getting off the ground was who's my initial helpers? Who am I? real support and that started with with four of my four of my friends actually um and then i think i just took time to think about what does this look like um blank sheet of paper stuff really what what would i like it to look like i think um was the start um and took it from there but it did organically it did organically grow but it organically took legs of its own
So I didn't have all the answers on day one. You know, it just became a snowball and at each step I would restock and think and the next stage would continue from there. I think if I think about actually the charity's name, Silk Elephant, the reason that elephant is in the charity title was because my dad's mantra to me, whenever I, my dad and I had wonderful business conversations. He was a real business mentor.
And I'd phone him and, you know, be in a stress and he'd say, Zoe, remember that great big bloody elephant? You can't eat it all at once. Just step by step, little by little, and then the whole comes. So that mantra has stayed with me through all of my career, but particularly through the charity. It's the little steps that you take create the big picture. So it wasn't about knowing I'm here and I know all the steps to there.
I had the vision, but the steps were incremental. I love that. So you didn't have a 52 page strategic plan then? No, no, no, it was… Thank God. No, absolutely not. It was very much, I need to do this. Right. What do I do step one? Step one was, let me talk about this with a few friends. Step two was… How do I get people involved? Facebook, that'd be a good call.
I never set up a Facebook community page in my life. Learn on the hoof. And then it was, how do I set up a charity? How do I do this? So there was research. I did lots of research and then I asked some people to help. And then it sort of went from there and it was an organic thing really. And I think each step that goes well in you. feel it and it's great it spurs you to the next the next stage you know the power of the energy continues and there were some things along the way that didn't quite get right but in the bigness of everything else it didn't really matter yeah that sort of sea of energy and it just breeds i think once you've got that it it then breeds to the people around you and they get the energy and then they're thinking about the next steps.
I think it was also just in some ways, I mean I talk about no ego leadership but actually just putting your ego aside, it didn't matter, you know, I didn't meet any of these women thinking, oh well you've never run anything like this before, it was totally irrelevant. It was all about the passion that they brought and we do this together.
And that's how we worked. So yeah, powerful stuff, I think. How do you deal with doubts and failures and when things go wrong? Yeah, sometimes I do struggle with some of them, if I'm honest. Some of them, when the doubts come in, I call them the shadow, the shadow comes. And I think what I've learned to do over the course of my life, but particularly I think since the charity and since grief.
It's in those shadows moments, that's when you really need to dig deep and be kind to you. How do I love myself in the moments that are most challenging for myself? And if I can't do that for myself in those moments, then I will reach out to my inner core. So I suppose I've always had that inner core of people that I know will help me, whether that's just a call to say, Zoe, actually, you're great, and this is just a little bit of a block, or it might just be somebody saying, you know, remember where you've been, remember where you're at.
So I can't do it for myself. I think, you know, I genuinely do now, and this is something that's only been probably over the last few years. I do do affirmations to myself now on a daily basis. I gratitude. That's the first thing I do in the morning is ground myself. I give gratitude for where I'm at in that moment and what the day is going to bring. I always say to myself, I'm grateful that I'm here.
I'm grateful that I have this day ahead. I'm grateful it's raining because we need it. I'm grateful it's sunny. And then I just affirm. where I'm at, you know, I'm doing all right. I'm okay. And I think that's really helped. So in those moments where you, I love what you just said about how can I love myself in this moment when things are not going how I want them to go, like, how do you even remember to ask yourself that question?
And then when you ask yourself that question, like, what do you do? I just want to get in right in there. And cause I might do some more of that myself.
I think when I'm really feeling really low in those moments, how do I do it? I've got used to visualising little me, if I'm honest. When I feel that unsure of myself, it's usually because I'm in little me mode. So I visualise little Zoe, and I say to myself, what does little Zoe really need in this moment? And if you think of that child, The thing that child needs most is a pick up and a hug.
And sometimes I might even do that physically for myself, which will sound crazy. And I do talk about this in some coaching, which is I just literally do the hug. And I've got used to doing that. And there are times, and I say to people now, don't tell everybody, because if you see it in a meeting, it's probably because I'm feeling a little bit, ooh. But I've learned to do that. and it becomes, I think, the more that you are conscious of what's really going on for me in these moments where I'm struggling, then the more you know how you look after yourself in that moment.
It's a practice. It's not come easy. And I'm, you know, I'm 52. I think that's it. You're 52. Yes. 52 and still learning. Yeah, massively. But also I think if I can't And there are certain times when you still struggle and you're still not sure what to do. That, again, is when I reach out. You know, I think… And reach out, obviously, to the women that are really close to me, to say, I'm not in a good place.
Can you just help me out? But those are less and less, because most of the time, yeah, I've learned to notice where I'm at and… look after and give myself a bit of love. And my mantra of I am worthy and I'm worth it. And I don't feel embarrassed about that anymore. I used to feel embarrassed about saying that sort of thing to myself, but I actually don't. That's part of my affirmation.
I'm worth it. You should flick your hair at the same time as you were saying that. Absolutely. I will. You talk about
many different things in the work that you do. And, you know, I've had the privilege of hearing you speak and actually speaking alongside you. And you're so authentic, you're so real. And you, you know, you hold down this big job in a very still quite traditional industry law. Yeah. And you are such a strong proponent of heart led leadership, leading yourself. You know, when we think about leadership, perhaps we don't think about them in those contexts normally, perhaps.
So tell me a little bit about what they mean for you, like these redefinitions of leadership. It's because I genuinely feel in leadership that if we don't come as who we are, it is very difficult to connect with people. And yes, leadership can be about leadership of the business, about P&L and all of that sort of thing. But leadership is about people, how we communicate people, how we bring them along on our journey.
And we can only do that if we truly bring ourselves. And to bring ourselves, we really have to know who we are. So I actually… the course of over last year I drafted our internal leadership program for what we call our forward leaders which is our partnership cohort and there are about 40, 42 or 43 partners within that cohort and I actually started with leader of the self which is quite unusual because most people would have started leadership of the business but actually I was no if we are going to ask our senior teams to lead people, which is what they need to do.
They need to know what it means to come authentically with no ego and know who they are. And this part of the leadership training is probably going to be uncomfortable for a lot of people because not many of us actually take time to really think about that stuff. And I think that's really, it's really critical. So for me, it's about really digging deep.
understanding your personal journey. I talk a lot about that when I talk to people about leadership, you know, who are you? Where have you come from? What's been your journey? What does that mean to you? And then, you know, just being able to be raw. I think that's really important. That doesn't mean to say, you know, you've got to go into management meetings and tell them everything vulnerable about you that's going on personally.
It's not about that. It's about just being raw and honest. You know, if we put up a facade, I think it's a little bit like, you know when you talked to me when I was speaking that first time and I was a little bit nervous, you know, of speaking alongside you and I had my piece of paper and you basically said, ditch it. It's a barrier. And so it's a bit like you don't need that facade piece of paper.
Come as who you are. and I have the joy of working with an executive board of Fletchers and we are all from the same ilk. There is no ego on that leadership board and that was a really important factor as to why I joined Fletchers because I'd worked with them as a consultant for about 18 months and I knew the team were basically like me, a little bit bonkers and intelligent and all those other things but we were just really decent people.
So I think if you come with that raw honesty of yourself That's how you connect with people. So I always say to my leadership cohort, connect before you direct. People aren't going to come on the journey with you or want to be, and yes, part of our role is to instruct and tell people and look at performance. It's really difficult to do that if we haven't connected. So that's where it comes from.
So having leadership authenticity as
your first part of this leadership program I think is phenomenal and very pioneering and so needed and you're so ahead of your time, as I'm sure that you know. And I love that it's going to be uncomfortable and I know that you would have both, all genders that would experience that here. So this is not something you're talking about that is only for women. So to develop egoless leadership, I can't imagine how amazing that would be when there are still so many leaders that are focused on their own self-gain.
How are we going to develop more egoless leaders? That's a good question. I don't know the answer either, but I mean having to spend quite a lot of time. in a number of industries where I would say, you know, the senior teams are perhaps the opposite to your senior team. And it's so political. Everybody's covering their ass. Everybody's trying to fight for their right to be there. Nobody really talks because you don't know what's going to happen.
I mean, it's just horrendous. And the idea of egoless leaders would be like, I think, taking them to Mars for a day trip. Yeah, you're probably right. I think it's probably quite a task, if I'm honest. I don't know, I think it's, you know, how do you spread that word? Proof is in the pudding, you know, if I was to think about where I work and, you know, the growth that the business has had and how we've driven that.
And it's come from from all of us in that type of style of leadership because we hold and support each other. We've just had some time out with the business just to be together and we do that every year and it's really important that we just have personal time where we can actually just talk about all the other stuff out of work that's troubling us or exciting us or whatever. And we talked a lot about the teamship amongst us. and how powerful that has been when you're you're working hard and driving hard and you know performance delivery obviously is a huge part of the agenda.
So maybe it's sharing a little bit of the story. I think it is hard because not everybody gets it and I've certainly felt that when I've sat around you know I often get invited to sort of round table dinners where there's maybe only 15 of you and things like that and I usually a bit of an outlier around the table. But, you know, I'm unapologetic in those moments of, well, you know, this works for me.
But yeah, are we going to change the world of leadership overnight? Probably not, sadly. Yeah, I don't know whether I've given you the right answer there, Sam.
it's it's it's it's a tough one um do you know what i think possibly you know as i've learned through the last 10 years of leadership actually what can we learn from um you know what i learned through the charity what can we learn from community and how how they do things i think that's really important because there are loads of successful not-for-profits charities, community organisations who are achieving and performing exceptionally well, but leading in a different way.
Because it comes from, it's heart-led, it's passion and purpose, but it comes from, I think if you find the passion and purpose and that heart-led feel, it's really difficult not to come to it raw, honest, and authentic. Does that make sense? It does. And I think women will lead this. Probably. Well, we are the feminine. And I, you know, I talk a lot about the feminine, the power of the feminine that we bring, you know, the emotional part of us, that passion part of us, which in my early career, I crushed so much because, you know, the law then was predominantly male dominated.
So it was a very male-oriented world. And also there was this expectation of women in the law, particularly if you were, you know, coming up a leadership chain, to be really hard and possibly even harder than the men, just to find their slot. I think as I've got older and found my voice, if you like, I don't shy from that emotional part of myself anymore, that raw, honest part of me. And to be honest, I wouldn't want to work with
any other business that wasn't like that or other people that weren't like that. I think I would find that really tough. Well, I love what you're saying about the proof is in the pudding because people are about results, aren't they, often at the end of the day. And if they can get the results that they want in this way, who wouldn't want it? I mean… I don't know anybody that loves the backstabbing and the politics and the am I going to lose my job tomorrow and can I say that, can't I say that.
It's so detrimental to any organisation. So if this is a way, a new way that actually works, gets you the results you want, yes, it's going to take a shift. You know, it's people like you that are leading the way on this and you showing people there is another way. I mean, you're showing them because you are in a business and you are on the top table and you do have these results and this is how you lead your team and your organization.
I think that's so powerful and fabulous. Yeah, thank you. I think you're probably right. You know, there's a story.
and evidence and you know I think we are becoming conscious of that as as our business grows and becomes successful and um you know other law firms in our arena are starting to sort of take note a little bit as to where we are because we are a bit we are different um you know I'd done one round table dinner and it was all the discussion was around remote working as well as dress code it was quite interesting and There was a moment at which the chair said, Zoe, you are quite quiet.
And I said, yeah, because I'm an outlier here. You know, they were, a lot of them were deciding they were wanting people to come back into the business, that they didn't want people to remote work anymore. And the impact of that on production as we call it. And me just saying, well, we have the absolute opposite effect. We will never go back to fully in-office working or 90% in-office working. um you know we are we are predominantly 80 percent of our people are female it's the nature of the work we do um and actually we have fully supported the remote working um ability because it works you know our production is great we have fantastic um employee engagement we score really well on Glassdoor um why would we change that and also when predominantly eighty percent of our people are female You know, we want our mums to go and be able to flex around school pickups and what have you, putting the washing in, whatever it might be.
Why wouldn't we want to facilitate that? Because happy people are productive. That's the end of it. And then there was discussion around dress code. And a large part of the discussion was around, you know, the need to get
people backing being suited and booted and you know there was a bit of a grumble around how casual it's gone again i said well i'm completely out of this because i i don't i actually can't remember the last time i wore a suit um but most of the time when i'm in in the office on all the exec team we're in jeans or an alternative with trainers you know we never dress in any other way unless it's an external meeting then i might go to the absolute length of putting on a pair of wafty pants but i will still have my trainers on because i actually don't think it matters it didn't matter anymore um it really doesn't it's about if you're going to come raw and authentic and honest then part of that is how you dress so you know unapologetically Be who you need to be.
And it works absolutely, absolutely fine. And in fact, I went down to a meeting in London, um, just after Christmas and it, as I said, I, I, part of my role is on mergers and acquisition. And so I, I helped create the pipeline. So going out to meeting other CEOs and, um, you know, how do we get them engaged with us? And there's two things about that. First of all, the one in London. and I did put my pair of wafty pants on rather than my jeans that's fine but I wore a pair of blue and pink trainers and actually it was a great icebreaker because the moment I walked in this phenomenal CEO and he just said I love your trainers I was like oh thanks and that started a conversation but actually as part of that conversation the main thing that he was most focused on and most interested in was our culture.
And, you know, he'd heard anecdotally, and I talked a lot around our people culture and our leadership. And that is actually what has now engaged them in quite significant, serious discussions as to how we may come together. And so there you go. The power of just being authentic and actually having that right culture, I think people do want. What are your final words of advice?
insights, perspectives for the people listening to this podcast? I think it would come back to some of the key things that we've talked about, which is, you know, find your heart and soul passion. I think that's really important, wherever that might be. And it might not be the whole of your work life. It might be that you find that external to work. But equally, you're a long time in work. So if you don't have some spark, it's going to be really tough.
You see it in people in leadership roles that are enjoying themselves. It creates an energy. It brings people on board. It would also be to be unapologetically you. You know, really understand who you are and that might take a bit of work and some reflection. it's not something you might know overnight but if you don't do some work on yourself and yeah and think about your reach out support network who are they to you so i sort of think of it like an insider but if you cut a tree down and you look at the inside i think of my rings so i have my absolute inner core where i'm most vulnerable you know those moments where we talked about where we were really struggling with imposter syndrome or this is really tough or it might even be you know you're in a really bad place that inner core who are they know who they are because then they're there right ready in the moment and then think about your next round out of that and your next round out of that and i think finally look after yourself how do we take time what i call it being still we are so so action-led in life in family with friends going out with work it's what are we doing next what are we doing next but actually the moment we just pause to be still that's for me where the magic happens that's where you light up because that's where the creative moments will come that's where you really learn to love yourself um so yeah i think that would be my final thing try and be still
Related content
Podcast
The Ambition Gap We Never Talk About
We often think of ambition as becoming a CEO, earning more money, collecting titles or climbing another rung on the ladder.
Podcast
Connecting to your Purpose
Sam chats to Suzanne Steele, Vice President and Managing Director of Adobe Australia about the importance of purpose and having your own personal board of directors.
Podcast
Reluctant Feminist
Sam talks with Gill Whitty-Collins about how we can achieve gender equality through closing the respect gap.
