Legally on the Move: Mercedes World - Penny Mallory - E01

0:00Welcome to a special brand new mini-series of the Legally Speaking podcast. Legally on the move, Mercedes world powered by Clio. The engine driving the future of legal tech and innovation. I'm your host Rob Hanna and in this three-part mini-series we're coming to you live from Mercedes-Benz world for Drive to Thrive. The future for mid-sized law firms. Mid-sized firms are the powerhouse of the legal industry. But with rising client demands, fast-moving tech and fierce competition, how can they stay ahead? We've lined up an incredible cast of legal leaders, innovators and special guests, including rally champion Penny Mallory, all tackling one big question.

0:38How can mid-sized firms drive real innovation and sustainable growth? Across this series, we'll dive into breaking tech barriers, building change-ready cultures and creating future-proof strategies, all with a little adrenaline on the side. So buckle up, folks. It's time to drive to thrive right here, right now in Mercedes-Benz World.

1:02Welcome to the Legally Speaking podcast, recording live from Mercedes-Benz World. And I'm joined by name, title and organisation.

1:11Penny Mallory:My name is Penny Mallory. I'm a leading authority on mental toughness and I'm a freelance keynote speaker. Absolutely. And yes, we're here for Clio's Drive to Thrive event at Mercedes-Benz World. Penny, you've had a tremendous career. Just tell us a bit about your background. Gosh, I have had the best, most exciting time. I guess part of the reason I've been invited here is that my background is motorsport. So Mercedes-Benz World, I've been to many, many times in my life. I was a rally driver for 12 years, got to quite a high level in the World Championship driving for Ford, which was amazing.

1:45Penny Mallory:That career ended. I went into TV presenting car programmes. And now I am a keynote speaker talking about mental toughness and basically sharing everything I've learned over the years. yeah and it's incredible do you have a particular highlight from your career that you would share for us from your driving days um there are so many and the ones that you'd think would be highlights um perhaps weren't the most amazing it was little moments like managing to save the car from going over a cliff you know things like that were highlights that i don't have photographs of but there's been so many highlights um and i guess there's a photograph i'll share my presentation me standing on the bonnet of my world rally car with I think eight trophies it's got to be a highlight.

2:25Wow incredible did you always want to go into that?

2:28Penny Mallory:I saw something on TV when I was six or seven years old it just stuck in my head because I left home at 14 I was homeless for a few years but so this dream never left me and one day I took myself off to a rally school and I followed that thing that got stuck in my head and yeah the rest is history. Yeah absolutely and very successful history at that okay so we've got a bit of a theme today on driving yep um so what does driving innovation mean to you in the context of businesses nowadays so you can't have innovation without change yeah most people don't like change most people resist change they like things the way they are and of course part of mental toughness is embracing change embracing the challenge every challenge that you're faced with in business in life has to incorporate some kind of change so it's it's helping people to develop that ability to to be optimistic and hopeful that things will be okay even if it changes could even be much better yeah and do you have a tip for leaders or businesses that might be struggling with that right now well I think just keep an open mind and and one thing that I'll talk about today is is if you have got a challenge start to think what is great about this problem rather than oh my god what about this problem it's flipping the script you know just just thinking about everything in a completely new way what is great about this problem i love that and i remember hearing from someone before um there's never anything wrong there's just something missing and i love that mindset when it comes to like problems or like building on what you said there in terms of what's great okay one thing you talk a lot about which is mental toughness yes and you're an expert very much on that tell us why that is so important particularly in the world we live today it's important to every sector every human being um and this is not a new concept the stoics were practicing um that the ancient greeks and ancient romans were practicing stoicism 300 years before christ you know this has been around forever it's now mental toughness in my world yeah so there isn't a human being on the planet that doesn't benefit i think from developing mental toughness your ability to manage your emotions feel in control of your life um be committed to set goals and achieve them you know all that kind of stuff be able to flip your view of a situation change perspective all of that stuff has been since the dawn of time important to success it hasn't changed if maybe it's even more relevant these days yeah and again for for organizations business leaders or people in their own careers that think actually I'd just love to be tougher mentally tougher do you have any top tips or strategies they could be thinking about the the one thing I would say was practice tolerating discomfort something that you really aren't happy about that you don't like doing that you constantly avoid just do it a little bit next day do it a little bit more and you know what in a very short space of time any stress response you get to that thing goes away your body adapts enormously quickly and something that two weeks ago was really hard you take in your stride today so it's really and that's that requires a commitment you have to do it yeah but it does every time get easier yeah agreed and one thing we've touched on but want to go deeper because I know you really emphasize the human side we're in a tech revolution where everyone's innovating the AI revolution and even more so in the legal space but culture and people are still fundamentally critical so what steps can organizations take to actually build teams that are then going to embrace all of this innovation i think get people really excited about what life could be like you know yeah i start to encourage people to visualize possibilities because everyone gets stuck and i suspect it happens a lot in the legal world you get stuck in a little groove this is how we do things and they don't want to come out of that groove because you know that uncertainty is too stressful so leaders encouraging um people to well for them to share their vision of what the life might be like and then to just encourage people to contribute you know when people feel involved in something they'll go with it when something is put on someone they tend to resist it so you get people excited about what life will look like if they do jump on board these new ideas yeah no agreed and if you can get that excitement into people it brings the energy you get more adoption and people just go with it and people start getting creative they get more confident And then suddenly the thing gets way more exciting than even the leaders.

6:53Penny Mallory:You've hired those people for a reason. Get in their brains and use them. People quite often will just stay quiet with brilliant ideas. You've got to encourage them to share them. Agreed, agreed. And for folks then who are not lucky enough to be here to hear your keynote and you've done some tremendous talks all around the world, can you give flavourers about what you'll be discussing and maybe some of the insights so our listeners can give some action? What I'm going to do is explain the concept of mental toughness, what it is and what it isn't. I'm going to talk everyone through the four areas of mental toughness.

7:26Penny Mallory:I'm going to weave my own story through the whole thing so people can see that I practice what I preach, that this is not just plucked from nowhere, this is based on my real life experience. Some of it's a bit shocking, some of it's funny, some of it's surprising. It's a bit of everything. And then I'm going to give everyone a prop at the end of it to do something with. and I guarantee the noise level will go crazy. Yeah, I agree. And you mentioned the four stages or areas there. Can we squeeze them out of you? The sense of control you have of your life, so control. There's commitment, your ability to set and complete a task.

8:01Penny Mallory:There's confidence and there's challenge, your ability to see challenges as opportunities. Love it. And I just love your whole growth mindset, your energy, even from first interacting with you and everything you do. So I'm really looking forward to the talk. I guess in terms of experiences, for us on the show, we've recorded on yachts in Dubai we've been Ibiza but this is a highlight for us getting to sit down with you recording live in Mercedes-Benz world you know with incredible cars in and around us where's like the the coolest place you've you've had an interview or some of the places you've spoken across I've been to some amazing places I have to say one of the coolest things was when I was presenting world rally championship flying in a helicopter into in Kenya and we landed with um the tribe oh gosh I've forgotten the name of the tribe you know the really tall people um who jump and we went in their mud huts and that was absolutely the best bit of reporting I've ever done because I'm fascinated by Africa and everything that goes with it so that was an amazing memory.

8:57And just going back to a few of your memories for this tremendous career, favourite track you raced?

9:01Penny Mallory:So I've raced twice at Silverstone and at Thruxton. I'm a rally driver not a racing driver. Rally stages is my bag and I would say throw me anywhere in Mid Wales and I will be the happiest girl in the world. There we go. There we have it. Very, very exciting. Okay, and if people want to learn more about you or indeed consider you for talks on mental toughness and various other things that you're doing that's adding value to the workplace and others, where can they go to find out more? Google my name, Penny Mallory, and you'll be taken to my website or there's a tonne of stuff out there. Just put my name in Google and you'll find me.

9:38There we have it. Well, it just leaves us to say thank you so much for joining us this morning on the Leagues Beam podcast. but for all of us recording live here at Mercedes World, over and out. Thank you for listening to this week's episode. If you like the content here, why not check out our world-leading content and collaboration of the Legally Speaking Club over on Discord. Go to our website, www.legallyspeakingpodcast.com for the link to join our community there. Over and out.