Legally on the Move: Professional Training - Nadine Stanton - E01

0:00Welcome to Legally on the Move, professional training, a brand new mini-series from the Legally Speaking podcast sponsored by Clio. I'm Rob Hanna and in this exciting new series we're coming to you live from BMA House in London, where senior leaders from across the legal profession are gathering to explore a critical question. What really makes high-performing teams in law? From leadership and communication to resilience, trust and psychological safety, we'll be speaking to experts and industry voices about what it takes to build teams that perform at their best in today's legal world. So let's get into it.

0:39Welcome back to the Legally Speaking podcast. Please let us know your name, title and organisation.

0:46Nadine Stanton:Yes, so my name is Nadine Stanton. I'm the Chief Executive of Professional Training Limited. You absolutely are. And we're at your conference today, the Professional Training Conference. absolutely fantastic firstly thank you so much for having us such a great energy positivity of the day just enjoying every moment so how did you decide on the central theme for your conferences and indeed for today's conference yeah so i felt that in the conference space and there are lots and lots of conferences out there yeah that it was really important to just have one key theme and really work on that one key theme all day from people inside the industry outside the industry and so on and how we came up with the theme is basically what we see in a lot of law firms is that high performance while that is what they want to achieve yeah isn't across the board what we see in practice so some teams are performing and even if they do perform they don't necessarily sustain that performance so we thought that was really important theme to explore yeah and i think it's been fair to say there's a lot of people keen for that theme today as well yeah why do you feel it's important to have speakers from both inside the industry but also outside of the industry yeah i just think it's really important to have a different lens on um the topic to get some fresh thinking to get some fresh innovation to get some fresh ideas because there's so much synergy actually between competitive sports yeah and business yes um and so you know that that was one of the things i thought was really important rather than just getting a lot of people agreeing and saying the same thing, I thought we'd give just a bit of a different dynamism to the whole event.

2:22Yeah, absolutely. And we're early into the day, but I mean, Emma Wiggs, MBE, incredible keynote earlier. I spoke to a lot of people that came away with so many ideas, inspired, pumped up, ready to go forward. So I think the quality of the speakers and the general setup today is brilliant. What do you think makes a good delegate experience?

2:42Nadine Stanton:I've been in the training industry for 20-something years and the law probably overall for about 30 years, is actually putting the delegates at the heart of it. So one of the things that was really amazing about Emma's keynote speech was she actually got the audience involved because you've got a team of really bright, capable people. So it's actually getting the energy, providing that context. So again, that's our workshops are all getting those round tables and getting the delegates involved. And I think that really makes for a good delegate experience to have them totally at the heart of everything that you do.

3:13Nadine Stanton:So everything that we're sort of putting on is to get them in some shape or form, whether it's questions, pair work, greet work, whatever, they are involved. So the day, hopefully, for everybody, goes really quickly. And I think once people feel like they're seen and heard and have that level of interaction, you know, that ultimately they feel valued. And everyone here today feels like, do you know what? I really feel seen here. It's a great safe space. We have open conversations. And people will actually go in and then take action on things. And indeed, new friendships, collaborations, business opportunities, you name it.

3:42At the heart, you obviously are a training organisation. so what made you decide to pivot into the conference space?

3:48Nadine Stanton:If I'm honest I felt like there was a little bit of a cap in the market so I'd been to a particular conference a couple of years ago and I felt that rather than pulling on this one theme and having the delegates at the heart of things it tended to be more of a broadcast more of a sort of lots and lots of panels and I felt that because we were experienced in training we knew what delegate engagement looked like we could lift and drag that into the conference space. And it was at the time, it felt a bit of a risk. You know, certainly we hadn't done it before, but sold out last year. We've sold out again this year.

4:23Nadine Stanton:So yeah, really happy that we've actually pivoted to do this, to showcase what we do on the training arena. And it's working, you know, and it's clear to see, and you know, life isn't necessarily about luck. It's about the more risk you take, the more luck you have. And as a result of you taking that risk, I think A, we're all the better for it. conferences like this and and b clearly it's it's working and community is something that's very important to you why because i think at the heart of community we can all start to explore and and have that safe going back to that psychological safety piece that safe space to think about in our own business either individually or our teams what's working what's not what we can do differently so building that community to be able to explore that and we're putting on the theme today of high performing teams but it could be anything i think it's really at the heart of things and actually what happens with it we found with our business why we're kind of growing so quickly is because building a community sells itself people want to be part of that community i know that's very much what you do you've built a community people want to be part of it yeah that's how we met yeah yeah absolutely um so i think i think the community piece for me is actually far more compelling than a sales environment.

5:33Yeah, I think when people come together, they, like you say, feel part of this community. Opportunities, collaborations like this one. And yeah, Nadine's referring to the lawyers retreat where we first met out in Ibiza, where we did our first interview at a yoga studio. And today we're recording at BMA House here in London. So we must continue to do these quite cool, slightly different alternative venues for our future interviews together. Just before I let you go, because I know it's a super busy day you've been hosting. it's been a great start i'm very excited for the rest of the day what do you hope that this year's

6:01Nadine Stanton:conference goes out and achieves what's really important to us is going back to the heart of the experience is that every single person who's part of that audience comes away with a palpable to a marginal gain a palpable takeaway where they think actually that's working our business needs to do more of that or we could tweak that that's what i want to do so it's not just about yes i've gone and heard a load of talks yes i've joined in a few things it's actually about having that space to learn something new but more importantly to carry that forward to disseminate that information because it's all about bringing it forward yeah so really really important that people come and it can be from anything from the networking opportunities from the sitting next door colleagues they didn't know from one of the speakers anything where they think that was a good use of a day really glad i did that yeah and i'm delighted i'm here doing obviously the media but also learning and just soaking up the information.

6:56And for the conscious watchers, they would notice this interview started with a busy room behind us with people networking. I must let you go because everyone has scuttled off now to start some of the workshop sessions. Just before I let you go, where can people find out more about professional training and where can they potentially get involved for any future conferences that you might be hosting? Shout out any websites or any social media handles.

7:14Nadine Stanton:Yes. So interestingly, we've already booked next year's conference, which is on the 17th of March, 2027. and the theme we're going to be exploring next year is actually about managing change and that can be the IT's changed, the personnel have changed, the office politics have changed, the culture has changed, the personnel have changed. Change affects everything. So what a brilliant topic to do the conference on. We've got our website, professionaltraining.co.uk. Do have a look at that. But I think the other thing that people might, your listeners might be interested in is that I personally run about once a month community-based for L &D, HR, head of people, webinars.

7:56Nadine Stanton:Yes. Which are hugely popular. And again, it's the same for where it's interactive, cameras on, you know, not just a case of me broadcasting on a topic, but actually genuinely hearing from those delegates what their experiences are on a particular topic. So all of those are on our website. If you're interested in doing any of those, by all means, hop on. We'd love to see you. Well, I would encourage people to absolutely do that. And just like to say thank you so much once again for inviting the Legally Speaking podcast to your conference. We've had an absolute blast as far. Excited for the rest of the day.

8:25But from now, from all of us on the show, 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. There's a link to join our community there. over and out!