Can You Be Kind and High-Performing as a Leader?

0:00Pete Markey:I'm not going to tell you about the time I ripped my trousers awkwardly before meeting Prince Edward. That was a big thing. Sometimes when I'm mentoring people, they'll say to me, you know, what was your plan, your five-year plan or whatever. I never really had one. And I've been through two or three other redundancy situations since. And I've had to keep that learning going forwards of we all have value and we matter regardless of what job we do. But golly, that was a hard lesson those years ago. As a leader, your job is to encourage people to succeed and develop. If you find yourself in their way, get out of their way.

0:28Pete Markey:You know the work is strong and you believe in it and you have good people around you. It gives you everything you need, I think, to push through. You were backing something that didn't work. So you had to accept that actually what I saw was going to work didn't. How did that feel going through that experience? Terrifying. Hello and welcome back to the Courageous Leaders podcast. I'm your host, Joanna Howes. And today's guest is someone who shaped some of the UK's biggest brands, Peter Markey. Peter is the former Chief Marketing Officer at Boots. With leadership experience across brands like TSB, Aviva and RSA.

1:02A multi-award winning marketeer and passionate diversity champion, he now serves as president at ISBA. Let's dive in. Pete, welcome to the show. I'm going to go straight in. What's been a courageous moment to you?

1:16Pete Markey:Thank you for having me. Great to be on the show. It's very exciting. Courageous moment was about five years ago. I have been learning improvised comedy for about six years. So it's not stand up. It's all made up comedy. I loved it. I thought, what a great skill. What if we could get nine other marketing directors trained up and put on a live show? What's the worst that can happen? Could we raise some money for charity? So we did it. But it was a bit nuts. We did eight weeks of lessons. These are people that had never done improv before. I'd done a little bit. And then we put on a show in front of about 150 people to raise money for comic relief.

1:48Pete Markey:It worked. We raised about£30 ,000. Amazing. But the terrifying thing is improv is all made up. So the jeopardy is enormous. So you're in effect putting yourself and your reputation and nine other people's reputation on the line and saying, we're going to put this show on for about two hours and it's going to be funny and you're going to enjoy it. So it was high stakes. It was high jeopardy. But it did pay off in part because of the amazing people involved and how clever they are and creative they are. How did you convince them to do this? Well, to start with, I thought it was going to be an abject failure because I did it with the Marketing Academy through Sherilyn Shackle, the amazing people there.

2:22Pete Markey:I did an email out basically saying, Pete Mark, he's on the lookout. And then you have like one person says yes. And you say, oh golly. And then gradually two. And then it starts to snowball. Then I decided to tap into my own network of people I knew could give it a go. If you thought of this and thought, then gradually you get to four, then five, then six. And then people start pulling their friends in. And then eventually you get to the 10. Then we only had one dropout and she replaced herself with someone in her team. And he was brilliant. And so then we had the 10. And I fused it with about three or four trained improvisers.

2:54Pete Markey:So the lesson always had some experience in. And the guy that taught us is the guy that teaches me each week. So it was great. It was lots and lots of fun. But improv's great. You just create, you play. And it's a shortcut to get to know each other much faster as well. But the important thing is it worked, thankfully. Well, I'd just like congratulations. Because I think that does take a lot of courage. I spoke at an event recently where they had a team of improv in all the gaps, like just showing leaders you can think on your feet you can do stuff and it was probably it is probably one of the most impressive things i've seen because they just took things from the audience and then they come up with this whole musical on the fly i'd love to know what interests you in just getting involved in improv and what has it done for you yeah it's everything you've just described so my son james is an actor and when i saw the lessons advertised at my local station i thought you know what this is a step into his world but without treading on his toes I thought I'd learn a lot but importantly have fun and the great thing about improv is it's like doing a play but there's no lines to learn so I was a little bit lazy and thought this should be way more straightforward and it just taught me a lot about creativity so I remember after the first lesson my brain was half aching because I'd switched on part of my mind that just felt hadn't been used properly for ages so the idea to create to play and I was working for a bank at the time become very logical very rational and suddenly I was pretending I was a submarine commander, you know, or I was taking part in the Moulin Rouge or whatever.

4:16Pete Markey:And it was incredible. It just was quite releasing. So it's taught me a lot about creativity, being able to think and be in the moment. The other lovely thing it's given me is a very diverse group of friends. Because often I think when you go through the journey of life, your friends, as amazing as they are, are like you. You end up surrounded by people like you. And what's been brilliant about improv is I'm with people of all generations, all ages, all backgrounds, none of whom ever have cared what job I do or don't do I'm just Pete with a pair of jeans and t-shirt and trainers on and we're creating and having fun and playing together um and that's got even more sort of challenging because I've built on what you said I've been learning musical improv recently so I'm not a trained singer and we've been putting on improvised musicals 20 minute made-up musicals completely from scratch so yes the journey continues what does it tell you about failure a lot the most funny amusing thing you're ever going to say you think of half an hour after the show's finished oh no you always go oh golly i should have said that but it teaches you i mean that you you can come out of a show and you go that was a that was a 10 out of 10 that was a 4 5 6 um it teaches you to just pick yourself back up again because the audience are relatively they're pretty forgiving they're not heckling you apart from throwing ideas at you my view as long as you get a few laughs you've had you've had a good show but no there's some i've walked away from and I thought, my goodness, that's the best thing I've ever done.

5:36Pete Markey:And the sum shows walked away and went, golly, that was just pants. That was just really bad. So I'm learning a lot, but you have to pick yourself up, keep going, and know that next time could be better or stronger, and you'll learn from that moment. So much of it is about working with other people. So you learn a lot about how could I improve the dynamic with other people so all of our ideas are better. So constant learning journey. It just feels like I'm sitting in my brain just going, it actually in progress teaches you so much about how to navigate being in the workplace you said they're like even just relationships how to work with different types of people how to read body language how to think how to bounce ideas from each other and how to be in that moment did it also change in terms of as leaders you could be in that situation where you're overthinking right about the decision you're going to make um are you going to say the right thing presenting in front of maybe new clients or in a pitch did it change your confidence in that place as well It did completely, actually.

6:32Pete Markey:I mean, years ago when I was a teenager, I didn't like speaking in public. I've had to train myself to try and enjoy it. But improv has been quite liberating because it's taught me to be freer and more creative in the moment and actually to improvise more. And often when we see presentations in work, they're sort of quite scripted, aren't they? And actually, sometimes you need to stick to certain key points. But improvisation adds, I think, more of a human element to actually is more relatable if we are more natural with each other and can relate to each other more. So it's definitely great for that, definitely for building confidence, allowing you to think in the moment, express yourself more.

7:05Pete Markey:And on your point, because you're always working with others, which most of us are in a team, there's a technique called yes and where you're building on each other's ideas, which is a brilliant leadership skill. It's about listening. It's about taking on board other people's ideas. It's about building on them. So in an improv situation, for example, you and I would be doing a scene. We are brother and sister on a beach. And my yes and is you'd say to me, Pete I love being on the beach and my yes and would be yes and let's go and get an ice cream and the audience go it's brother and sister they're going to get an ice cream now the opposite of that is is is a no so if you said Pete it's great to be on the beach and I went no I hate beaches I've immediately killed the entire scene and the audience look at me like well that's a bit of idiot but so often that happens in business where it's so easy to push and challenge and and kill others ideas it's quite liberate to say well no I'm going to listen more lean in more build on people's ideas build the team spirit build that collaboration and accept and embrace other people might have better ideas than me and often they do and that's quite liberating too so yeah it has all these extra benefits so I couldn't recommend it enough I'm booking in I'm sold it's been it's been on my mind for a while like this is the next thing to do because I tell you just cover so much and I think for me what I'm really trying to embrace at the moment is that playfulness bringing back that thing of play when we were children at that wonder and that curiosity and i saw that when i saw the improv just going they're all just having they're all being able to play which i think sometimes business has become so serious the world has become so serious we're going into a future that's a bit unknown and i think to keep that that human spirit of joy and playfulness i think is absolutely key it's so important and you're right i think it's knocked out of us at a certain age and trying to recapture that and find it again is wonderful and it's it's okay to enjoy work to actually have fun at work but also be really serious you know the business i've done you know the stuff i've done in boots the last few years we've had a very serious growth and transformation agenda but boy have we had fun doing it along the way in fact i before i left one of the last things i did is training the entire team we had an away day and we had an hour on improvisation techniques the whole team went through it and loved it my lead team were trained in improvisation and creativity by group from mischief theater do the play that goes wrong incredible experience We did it in the Duchess Theatre where they actually do the play on the stage.

9:24Pete Markey:And they came with some trepidation, but came away going, wow, that's liberating. I can use that tomorrow. So definitely, I think there's definitely something to be said about improv techniques in the workplace being freeing, liberating and in your word, playful. Yeah. And I think at Leaders, we've got a responsibility to try and bring that balance into the workplace. Just a quick reminder, if you haven't already, to please hit the like button and subscribe to the channel. It's a small action that makes a big difference. You'll be the first to know when new episodes drop and your support helps us create meaningful content for leaders like you.

9:58I'd also love to hear from you. So if you have any thoughts, questions or ideas, pop them into the comments. And if you're curious about how my leadership coaching or training could support you or your team, just drop me a DM and we'll set up a call. Thanks so much. Now let's get back to the episode. I'd love to know that on the improv, what's that in terms of thinking? and I'm wondering if this has maybe helped where I'm going with this question next, like a defining moment for you. So if we think about maybe in the work setting, what's been then a defining moment where you've had to bring your courage to that?

10:29Pete Markey:It's been quite a few actually. I bet. But they're great moments, aren't they? I think they are landmark moments. So the one I'll pull out is I worked on a wonderful insurance brand called More Than, which was one of those challenger disruptor brands, some of the best to work on. You haven't got the biggest budgets, but you've got to stand out. and we had to change agencies we end up with the wonderful vccp and the brief was that no one really talks about insurance not the most exciting you don't come home and go golly let's talk about home insurance um but we wanted to create something water cooler moment-esque so people were in the workplace or with friends and went have you seen this work have you seen this advert and that was the brief so three ideas went into research one was about bringing back a character called lucky the dog that had been famous for the brand the other was a sort of a pass it on idea and there was a third one which was just bonkers which was that we would bring over an impressionist from america called josh robert thompson and he would become a character called more than freeman he would do the voice of morgan freeman the well-known hollywood actor in the style of the film shawshank redemption and we would do a series of ads like that now going to research i thought oh golly that that more than freeman idea is so nuts people people aren't going to go for that so i had my money on the dog well the dog bombed it was described as a as a crap 70s sitcom so what do I know the middle one pass it on was about your friend cut your neighbor cutting your lawn your friend washing your car and people said if someone tried to wash my car and cut my lawn I'd have words with them that so it wasn't seen as that favorable whereas the Freeman one people went wow that that's I like that so I remember sitting next to the the uh the CEO of the agency in the research I turned to him went we've got to deliver this now haven't we so the brave bit then was you do the research then I had to sell it into the business a very serious insurance company and say we're about to do an impression of Morgan Freeman.

12:16Pete Markey:We're going to stick this guy on a roof on top of a car. We're going to drench him in rain. We're going to whatever, you know, just to show the effects of why you need good insurers. And off we go. And so I had to walk around the exec team, both in the UK and a group level, put my neck on the line with the team and say, this is what the research says. And we need a defining water cooler moment. And thankfully, they backed it and off we went a man's home is his castle and it's only proper to insure that castle because life has a funny way of throwing dance sponges at our dreams when you buy buildings insurance with more than you could get up to 75 000 pounds free contents cover repeated every year if you stay claim free so you know you're being looked after for the long haul i'm more than Freeman.

13:05Pete Markey:Thank you for listening. But it was complex because we had to pay the real Morgan Freeman for likeness of his voice and get this guy Josh over, never been to the UK before go through this experience and Morgan Freeman had to approve the scripts and the final films and stuff like that so it's quite a step in trying to track Morgan down, he's off filming all over the place and sending contracts and all sorts of bits and pieces but amazing experience and it did wonders for the brand health. I was lucky enough to meet Morgan two years into the campaign he invited us me and the creative director to go to the Dorchester to meet him we had an hour with him in his hotel room when he was promoting the last of the Batman films he was in amazing hour with him wow he gave me a high five um simply because he said how's the campaign doing I said actually Morgan what's great is the values you bring the sort of the warmth of trust uh the the depth of character are what people are now saying about our brand and that's what made him very very happy that's wonderful i'm just gonna ask someone's really curious what was it like being in his presence what was his presence like yeah he was very um it's a great question he was actually quite humble that makes sense there was no sense of you are in the presence of i mean there was a sense of you in the presence of greatness but he didn't make you feel that way he just was great so there was a real humility and And the important bit is he did a lot of the asking of the questions, which was quite interesting.

14:29Pete Markey:And he wanted to know more about us and our context of him and what we were doing as opposed to him sort of talking to us. So it was funny afterwards because there were so many questions that I should have asked him about Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves and Bruce Almighty and films I've loved. But no, he was far more interested in how the campaign's doing and how we could work together and stuff like that. But no, it was an amazing hour and a lovely, lovely kindness that he showed as well in giving us he didn't need to give us that time but he wanted to um so it was a lovely moment yeah it's nice it just makes me go something i talk about a lot is when you arrive with curiosity you arrive as someone who wants to ask questions it's just lovely to hear someone who's so high status can still tap into that kind of curiosity and questioning and connecting with people for you personally how did it feel making those brave decisions did you wake up nervous did it keep you awake at night um and how did it sort of adapt how you needed to be as a leader, bearing in mind you were backing something that didn't work.

15:28So you had to accept that actually what I saw was going to work didn't. So accepting that it's okay to not be right and then get behind something that was on your head a little bit, being, you know, the CMO. So how did that feel going through that experience?

15:43Pete Markey:Terrifying. Because there's so much riding on it because when you get down to one route, it's the one route you want to do, therefore you have no other routes. So he's thinking, we have to make this work. So there's so many sleepless nights. Back to tracking Morgan down, getting him to sign the contract, getting Josh to agree to it, getting everything signed off from a compliance legal perspective, using music that wasn't Shawshank Redemption but sounded like it. All bits you sort of worry about. So there are many sleepless nights. Then we filmed it in the winter, some of it around Surrey and Sussex.

16:15Pete Markey:We end up in Brighton, and the weather was rubbish. So then you get there, and it's raining. you don't want it to rain on the last day it started snowing and then when we finished filming the film crew got got snowed in the next day because it snowed so heavily in brightonable places so every day had this sort of jeopardy and worry to it um but i think if you you know the work is strong and you believe in it and you have good people around you it gives you everything you need i think to push through yeah and there's a commitment to we will overcome any barrier i had a similar thing i did a campaign i don't do campaigns for liberties all the time but at TSB I did one with David Schwimmer from Friends.

16:52Amazing.

16:53Pete Markey:And that was equally hard because we were trying to do it when we went into lockdown, had to stop it, filmed when we came out of lockdown, had all these restrictions on what we couldn't, couldn't do. But myself, the team, we were so focused on, we knew the work was amazing. With the agency, we needed to make it, we needed new work. So there was such a commitment energy to overcome any barrier we possibly could. So we put David, for example, in a camper van. So most of the shops he's driving around in a camper van just to overcome the barriers that you couldn't have two people standing next to each other and so on so it was very clever but that passion commitment surround yourself with great people drive it through but it starts with selling in the vision internally but yeah these things are hard you keep going yeah but more fun as a result i think exactly and i think you can only grow grow from them there's twice you've now said um jeopardy yes his having jeopardy is it kind of around you in your life how's that served you how's that helps you having a bit of sense of jeopardy i think it increases your courage and confidence i think if you can overcome those moments that are a bit full of jeopardy it increases your confidence to go you know what i can i can do this again so yeah the freeman one i i am confident is what pushed me when we came to the work with with um with david schwimmer going well i've done this before i can therefore do this again just stacking the evidence up i think so yeah and then it also helps you know what to what to line up so i need this sort of team and these sorts of people in this sort of set up and this is how I need to sell this in so it helps you overcome that I think um but yeah it's still it doesn't mean it's any easier though but I mean you get it you get a bit more confidence of we can definitely do this I think that the self-trust stacks up and the bravative of that and the belief because I have such a belief that confidence only really comes after action yeah you're right you can't wait so I what I'd love to know is this sense of you know a bit of jeopardy overcoming anything that comes your way when did that start for you were you quite a go out there go get a young person like quite confident doing stuff or has it been a gradual growing up stage for you to be able to do this sort of stuff it's definitely been a journey it's um I got a school report my dad is clearing out his house at the moment he's going to move house and he sent me an old school report from when I was a kid living in Newcastle and it said I was very good at football which I'm not now it's very disappointing but said I was I I was a quiet but likable boy, quite shy.

19:12Pete Markey:And I read that and it brought a little tear to my eyes. I thought, was that what I was? And I probably was then. And right through school, even up until I left school, I was quite shy, quite introverted. And then I went to university and something happened. I had a moment when I did a course in communication. I did HND, then a degree in Southampton. And then we had a great guy called Colin, a Scottish guy. and we had in the first year a project to be our own advertising agency. Very cool. Very exciting. And we had to do a new car, a new Volkswagen car. And he made me the account director. So I had to run the team.

19:47Pete Markey:And I freaked out. And I went to see him. And I remember standing in the stair with him and going, Colin, I cannot do this. I cannot do this. And I won't do a Scottish accent. But he said, calm down. You can do this. And you're going to do this. So I worked with the team. And I remember vividly standing up to present. and I made a joke about how we'd made lots of it was a silly thing about we had lots of cups of coffee and tea and a lot of late nights on it and people laughed and something was releasing in that moment of like you know what I could do this thing and we smashed it and ever since then I've actually quite enjoyed standing up and speaking in public because there was a moment of release of going I'm okay at this I can do this thing but it took as many moments in my life someone amazing believing in me and giving me a platform and pushing me.

20:37Pete Markey:And it also goes back to, as a teenager, I was in Boys Brigade. I was very shy. I had an amazing captain, a guy called Sid Donnell, who kept inspiring me, kept pushing me to get all the badges there, to do every Duke of Edinburgh's award. Just believed in me throughout. And he is one of the most pivotal figures in my life of someone who, and they're all volunteers, but he was a captain of that company in Cainsham in Bristol. His belief in me and the other cadets there it's really set me on course and that particularly was great because it taught me the value of hard work and achieving things you put hard work in you get something like the gold duke of ennivers award is great but you have to learn those things but i've been yeah very lucky to have amazing people who've who've wanted to push me out there in a good way and i've been able to lean into that yes it's been quite a journey so how have you paid that forward how is that having that experience of people really believing in you how did that form the leader you've become i think you've got to when you've had those examples and there are many others i can pull out across my career people who backed me believed in me you have to give it back because i think that's what being a leader is about um i'm also very aware that this is deep here but our time on this earth is very finite isn't it and and we've got to make our mark you want to be remembered for doing good you know not just i don't driving your own career forwards for your own ends your own aim what what genuinely is the point of that that's no legacy is it the legacy is the impact of the lives you've helped and the people you've supported and so I think you've got to pass it on so I've been lucky enough to work with the marketing academy the school of marketing with my old university in Southampton to provide mentoring and support I'm very happy to do that always in fact if people reach out to me on LinkedIn I try and contact people and say look of course I'll have a coffee with you or do a call because why the heck not you know and I like people who are smart and switched on and say I'd like to have a chat with you so why not do that so I do believe we shape the future and we have to pass that on and you have to set an example of doing that to others and with your own team too and I like the way you put it in terms of you know leaving having your mark and doing good in the world it's not leaving your mark and I don't know you have a name for doing the most awarded campaign or it's not about what you do physically it is about how you help others how you help others grow and I think it's sometimes hard because I think so many people focus on I want a book or I want a course or I want this it's like you need something tangible that's your legacy but actually just being someone it's referenced oh my gosh Pete helped me choose this Pete helped me believe him that for me is true legacy it doesn't have to be physical yeah I agree yeah I you know I look at it and say this is you know when I die there's going to be no one at my funeral saying god he did that great more than Freeman campaign it's not even going to mention it they might do yeah yeah pretty much some will for a joke now I've mentioned it here but but they won't because it's irrelevant but they'll hopefully say other things about character the same way we'd all want that to be the case my daughter is great leveler for me on this so I invested a small sum of money in a short film that a comedy called Office Royale that made it to the Chinese theatre in Hollywood so it got played there as part of a festival I came over to my daughter said golly Sophie I'm exec producer on this film my name's in the credits she looked to me she's 18 she said dad no one stays to watch the credits no one's going to see your name so it doesn't really matter and it was a great level she was pulling my leg partly but it was a great level to say no you're right it doesn't matter and that's not my legacy my legacy is is bigger than that my legacy is to not be a footnote on the screen in a theater when people are walking out it's hopefully about the impact we make in each other's lives yeah 100 there's a lovely exercise i did when you had to write um like almost i can never say that your own eulogy is it for your what you'd like people to say at your funeral it's quite a good exercise because if you write it you then are really painting the person you want to be and then you can do a good assessment of am i really doing is that a reality check what i'm doing i know who i want to be so what work do i need to do to get there so i'm all very much for painting that picture of that future self and thinking about who how and who you can become that i like that i think it's a really good thing to do and actually i've tried to do that when i've gone into jobs in the last few years when you say what's the end point of a job of in this time i want to have done this and often that It could be business goals.

24:48Pete Markey:But I love that thought on actually what do I want to achieve as a human being, as a leader? What people impact do I want to have? I might want to drive the business's performance, but what I want to drive in the team, what tangible difference do I want to make? What legacy can I leave behind in the people there? And what impact can that be as well? And you're right because I have so many conversations with the teams I work with where I look at how they set all the objectives. And they very are hard objectives. But then they've invested thousands into creating their values. And obviously values only really come alive through the behaviours in the organisation.

25:15I was like, well, where are the behavioral objectives? Where are those things of like measuring kindness or measuring giving feedback or measuring listening skills? It's like, what are we doing to really go? How have we shifted the needle with our people and grown them versus have we got tens of thousands followers on X product now? So I'm hoping slowly, it is slowly, it's starting to shift that if we invest more in the people's growth, actually the objectives just naturally more hardened. they just actually happen because the people are happy and performing so they do versus burning

25:49Pete Markey:people out i agree it makes such a difference and then those are where the real stories come because people remember those moments and that that creates a legacy and then those people at whatever level they are they will become the leaders of tomorrow that's what they will then engender in their teams and their people and people matter people really matter we're not robots we're not machines we're not sort of marching into work you know robotically actually people are living breathing and actually you want to have fun, you want to be respected, valued, you want to grow as a human being. You want to be ambitious and you want to hit those goals 100%.

26:20Pete Markey:But there's not a sort of at any cost. And that cost should never be people's burnout or time or energy. It should be that people feel valued and rewarded and accepted and appreciated and love for who they are. It's part of that journey too. And go home feeling good. All we want to do is feel seen and heard. I'm kind of hoping with the robotics that are coming in and AI coming in, And I've noticed it slightly that we are starting to have more conversations about what does it actually mean to be human and actually trying to carve out what is us. Now robots are here, pretty much. Well, who are we?

26:52And what is it we're going to own? And what is it can we hold on to that robots and AI can't take away from us so we can complement each other, but we still know what it means to be human?

27:01Pete Markey:I think that's going to become increasingly important. I think particularly for the generation, look at my kids, their generation coming off that is, you're right, the literal DNA of what makes us special and unique. And AI is great for so many things. But back to our earlier points on things like improvisation, actually, you'd hate to lose that improvisation and creativity or thought or ideation, the things that make us special, and the connections, the emotional, powerful connections we can have with each other. I'd hate to lose any of that because it's special and has to be something protected and unique hopefully the tech will give us some more time to do that which would be nice well I hope so yeah there's an agency I work with you described as AI powers humans and I like that sense of the AI is helping us but but it's powering some of what we do but it's ultimately it's it's humans at the center still yeah now changing text slightly there is no chance you're sitting in this seat a CMO and all the experience you've done and the campaigns you've done and the people you've worked with without having some sort of epic failure along the way yeah because I think that's so much part of our journey and in becoming who we want to be have you got a story you're happy to share I'm happy to yeah I've got several actually so I'm not going to tell you about the time I ripped my trousers awkwardly before meeting Prince Edward that was an epic failure that's a story of another day it was slightly embarrassing um but I was once in a business early on in my career that just spectacularly blew up.

28:21Pete Markey:So I was in Centrico, I owned British Gas. They owned the AA for a while, the famous automobile breakdown business. And I was sort of, I wasn't cooky, but I was like, oh, I'm doing quite well here. I'm going out the ladder. I'm on sort of talent profiles. So I took this job at the AA in Basingstoke. My family lived there at the time. My son was a baby. And they had a project to do with golf. The AA were going to get into golf membership as like a golf loyalty club. So I went into the business, worked my way away. But you could tell relatively quickly it wasn't the world's best project it was sort of underfunded things were sort of going wrong and so I reached a year into it was brought to an office and told you you're being made redundant this project is is massively over budget it's failing and you don't have a job anymore and you go golly so my son's like very young um I have no job and I don't know what to do and so it was quite a cathartic moment because you go from being 100 miles an hour in a job and the job is all consuming to my job is now relevant because my job is largely non-existent.

29:21Pete Markey:And that was quite a moment. I also had to eat some humble pie and go back to people at British Gas saying, is there any chance of a job back? And what was particularly hard is the project then got tarnished as a failure. So whenever you would try and go for an interview or conversation at the AA, it was like, well, we don't really want to touch you because you're in this thing that's failed. But then a miracle happened. So a lady I worked with at British Gas at the time found out what happened to me and mentioned it to an old boss of mine who I was too proud to tell and he said we got it we got to sort something out for Pete so he phoned me up and he was then the MD of the telecoms business and said come and have a coffee and they created a job for me and it was amazing because it kept me in the same company kept me in Centrica but was a lifeline out of a no-win situation there that was a no-win scenario where no one wanted to hire me in centrica it's quite hard to get a job outside and i literally personally felt like i'd gone from being the golden boy to the yesterday's child you know so quite hard but in that i think the learning is around you know your job's being made redundant but you still have value and people can still value you and you still have something to contribute and bring and I've been through two or three other redundancy situations since and I've had to keep that learning going forwards of we all have value and we matter regardless of what job we do but golly that was a hard lesson those years ago it's tough it's really tough because it does I think question how strong your self-worth is because I think I've worked with a lot of people to help them understand their worth and so many as you say attach it to the house you've got the what you wear the car you drive the job title and it's so attached to our external life of how we perceive ourselves or what we think other people need to see from us but our worth is being enough without any of that and it sounds like you had to really go through that experience it's hard i found it again i've left boots recently i'm on the look for the next opportunity and you worry you come out and think ollie people know me as a cmo boots what am i now i remember sitting next to my daughter is saying you know you're leaving does it and she just gave me a hug and said but you're still my dad there's moments like that you think okay this is great and the people that reached out to me the coffees I had with people have been great because I've sort of gone well actually okay I'm I'm not the same I have boots anymore but I'm still me yeah so I've still got stuff to bring it's also it's hard isn't it yeah I remember you saying to me when I invited you to come on the show and you said well I'm I'm actually leaving boots as if to say I'm not sure if you still want me and I'm like of course I still want you just because you don't have that job title anymore and I think unfortunately we attach too much to someone's title rather than who they are and what what they can bring and it's so much more about the being versus the doing which is why it's so important we do this podcast to share the stories of who you're being not just oh I've done this I've done that I've worked here that stuff's kind of yes it's great you've done it but it's not fundamentally who we are and i think it's so hard to get it's so easy sorry to get wrapped up in some of those titles and stuff so but i think be able to distance yourself and go well i've got that title that but i'm more than that thing yeah you know and uh and therefore i'm you're right we've all got value to bring so i'm curious obviously you need there needs to get to cmo and the levels you've climbed there is a climb in the ladder it does take a bit of that ambitious streak to have a like destination i want to do that what was it like for you did you know you wanted to be senior did you know you want to be ceo or was it a bit accidental somewhere in the middle of that so sometimes when i'm mentoring people they'll say to me you know what was what was your um what was your plan your five-year plan or whatever i never really had one i remember when i was a more than doing the job we talked about a moment ago that that was a moment when i thought golly actually i'm starting to rise up here and so it was only then i got a taste of maybe i could do more so it's a pivotal moment in there was the we had a group cmo fantastic lady she stepped down from the parent company Royal and Son Alliance and the CEO phoned me up and said I'd like you to write a pitch as if you could run all the marketing globally in the UK because I like you and what you're about he was a very strong powerful figure amazing guy and I thought godly so I went home and wrote it emailed it to him expecting him to come back saying well I'm not sure about this stuff he came back and said I like it go and do what you've written and in it was I'd become the chief marketing officer I'd look after you so I wrote my own job description and that was when I sort of thought okay there's something here now I've sort of got you know you have a scary moment thinking well I've now got the title I've written my own job scripts now I've got to go and do it so I love that job I did it for about three years got to travel the world amazing experience and since then I've moved around into other CMO jobs but it was that moment of the belief of a CEO again going I like you and what you're about pitch to me what you do and if I like it I'll do it and then off we went and we did it so quite a journey um so it was it wasn't quite well I guess it was sort of by design but a little bit of luck along the way as well and since then I've just been lucky enough to have opportunities come my way so post office was someone I'd worked with before who said look I've got this job do you want to come in and fix this thing Aviva was about learning about innovation TSB was was about learning of someone amazing who was retiring and then taking on from them and boots was a burning platform where you know we need brand health and sales and growth needed fixing and that people needed confidence in marketing again um so i've been very fortunate very lucky very blessed to do those sorts of jobs but yes it started with a pitch to a ceo that's lovely what i'm hearing a little bit is there's that thing of you had the courage to put down this is what i know i could do and then which i'm guessing probably inside is like oh here we go let's put it down and see what happens so there's also i think yes i love total people backing you believe in you but that belief in self to put something on paper of what you believed you could do and then what I was really and I know sometimes it can be hard to talk about yourself or your own sort of superpowers but for you to have people go well yeah come here and come here they obviously see something in you and something you've built in terms of the trust and how you show up for leaders listening now what is it you think that you embody as a leader that has helped you get these opportunities see them through you can get an opportunity but then it doesn't work but you've stayed, it's been successful.

35:34What do you embody in leadership that you think has made that happen?

35:38Pete Markey:I have to pretend a little while to decode what it is over the last few years, but it's because often you don't stop and think. But it's definitely a relentless pursuit of continually making things better, if that makes sense. So when any business I've arrived in, I've got this sense of where I want to take things, but how I want to make things better with the team on the way. And I've got this restlessness of, we're only as good as what we did yesterday. Boots, I think, has sort of accelerated that desire to continually improve and make things better, be very restless. I've got this inbuilt desire to keep learning, to know that I'm not the finished article and I'm a work in progress.

36:14Pete Markey:I'm a flawed work in progress and I've still got stuff to learn. Every day that gets me out of bed, what new experiences, what new learnings, what else can I bring? What added value can I bring? What difference can I make? That's definitely what's powered me. That and this relentlessness of we need to do this. We need change is important. We need to change things for the better. That's definitely kept me going. The other bit I think, and I've wrestled with this, is it's okay to be nice. I remember years ago when I was interviewed for the job at More Than by the MD at the time, him saying to me, you're very nice.

36:48Pete Markey:Are you cut out for the tough things this job requires? That really stayed with me of like, therefore, being nice is not good. and actually what I've learnt is you can be nice but tough and fair and assertive you don't have to be nasty to get on and get on the world actually you can be okay you can treat people really well but still be tough and fair and get results and drive things forwards in business so that plus that tenacity and drive is definitely what people would say is mixed up in my DNA and I bring a lot of fun and energy to everything we would do within the teams I'm in people enjoy it we have great camaraderie we feel like we're connected family a connected team of people who've got each other's backs and really want to do great work together i love it can i come and work for you wherever you go next yeah yeah yeah it sounds brilliant you can come with me but what i love is that showing and demonstrating you can have that balance of directness and humility and humbleness and and i think there's nothing better than being in front of a leader who doesn't need to have all the answers i think that is just because it just gives permission to everybody else to feel that they can speak and then they can share which i think is incredible absolutely incredible i did learn that the hard way though actually when i was when i was at rsa i had some coaching was in the insurance industry and then and the guy told me off for treating my office like a doctor's surgery so i did used to have a tendency people would come to me with a problem and i'd say well here's your solution and i got coached into saying well if people come to you with a problem ask them what the solution is and it's quite game-changing so if you ever find yourself running a team like that where people come to your problems ask them what they think the solution is first it's game changing and that taught me a lot about there's moments sometimes you do have to step in because you got an answer but actually often the people come into you with a problem i've got a darn good idea might not be your idea about what to do about it listen to them because they're the ones that can deliver the magic just a quick reminder if you haven't already to please hit the like button and subscribe to the channel it's a small action that makes a big difference you'll be the first to know when new episodes drop and your support helps us create meaningful content for leaders like you.

38:52I'd also love to hear from you so if you have any thoughts, questions or ideas pop them into the comments and if you're curious about how my leadership coaching or training could support you or your team just drop me a DM and we'll set up a call. Thanks so much, now let's get back to the episode. Literally it's a mantra I talk about because I'm very worried about people becoming reliant leaders so where the team just stop thinking of themselves because they just have too much reliance and And also what it does though, it does fuel the leader's ego because we all like to be the fixer. And if I can be the fixer, I can solve that.

39:24And like if we had this role growing up as being the hero or I'm the leader now. So you think your intention's good. You think you're doing the right thing. But I don't think anyone can quite see the consequences of, well, one, you're going to burn out yourself. But two, your team stopped learning and they stopped learning how to think.

39:39Pete Markey:It's a big worry, isn't it? And therefore, you're not building the leaders of tomorrow. Well, actually, I mean, the team particularly I ran at Booth, amazing team. and everyone had their own voice around the table, had their own viewpoint and they were running activity where they would feel like, quite rightly, they were, I described it unleashing people's potential. People let loose to be brilliant. So we'd talk about what was going on, I'd get updates, but there was no moment when anyone would feel like, oh golly, this guy, this person's on my shoulder or we need to go to them with all the ideas or solutions.