Conscious Leaders with Ruth Farenga

Clair has some very clear perspectives on how she manages herself and her thriving marketing agency business, Serotonin, in Manchester. In her previous life, she founded a charity called Odd Arts, which transforms lives through applied theatre, particularly in the criminal justice system.

This work in prisons required her to build trust very quickly and she has honed this skill over time.

In this interview, we explore trust in its many forms. For Clair it’s things like being very grounded. With Clair, you won’t hear phrases like the ‘shiny side’. She is very real and brings a refreshing honesty.

As a leader, Clair is very connected to her employees and recognises that some need more emotional support than others. She’s happy to adapt to their needs.

Clair has been through a lot personally, from divorce to being held at gunpoint, and it is these moments–being on the brink physically and emotionally–that provided her the foundation to have the courage to do what she is accomplishing now.

Lee is clearly a true progressive leader in engineering and manufacturing world. He looks after three sites of about 800 people for Specsavers where he has had a huge impact on employee satisfaction.

He took one of the sites where people were the least satisfied to getting a rating of 9.1 satisfaction. He describes the process of really listening to employees and taking on their full feedback and ‘falling on his sword’. This lack of defensiveness, he says, is the key to the process as people could see that leadership saw the issues and were prepared to act on them.

He’s someone who has always treated people equally whether it be senior leaders or those on the shop floor, he knows that people at all levels need to feel valued.

He’s had to undergo his fair share of tough conversations and for him, it’s about being direct and not fluffy and showing how the business will do its best by people.

As someone who got his girlfriend pregnant at 17, he had to grow up fast! He married her before their first child was born and they’ve now been together 34 years. He had to be a real rock from an early age and that seems to have filtered into how he supports his staff too.

Grace is the Chief Experience Officer at Accenture Interactive. Grace is in a C-Suite job, identifies as non-binary and feels like it’s their role to help people feel included. Grace does this by implementing role-open behaviour and allowing their quirkiness to shine. They are quite comfortable being seen as different. In fact, their ‘weirdness’ factor is a good thing, it’s non-threatening and it helps others in the organisation feel like they can share something about themselves with Grace.

Welcome to the Conscious Leaders Podcast – 2021 Highlights Episode. 

This year has been about finding more great leaders who are willing to step up for their employees, who are really willing to show the human side of what they do – the highs and lows – not a surface-layer version. As listeners, you’ve told me you want to know what their journey has really been like and how they’ve supported their employees while running commercially successful businesses.

As CEO of successful baby food brand, Ella’s Kitchen, Mark Cuddigan is committed to his employees in a profound way. His leadership principles are to allow for autonomy. Instead of making decisions, Mark aims to serve. Indeed, four years ago he committed to not making any decisions at all! From that point on, he has been a sounding board, a coach and provides his input--but he will always leave decision-making down to the expert: the employee at hand.

Leadership is a privilege to him. He believes that all employees have superpowers and recently they got everyone to share that superpower so that they could distribute them around the business. This enables people to support others with their relevant strengths.

Following the death of his Managing Director just before lockdown, Mark has learnt a lot about looking after himself. This extreme tragedy led him to put everyone else first to his own detriment. Now, he’s much more committed to his own wellbeing. This starts with things like meditation and getting a dog!

As a registered B Corp, Ella’s Kitchen has very high ethical standards. He’s invested in seeing the B Corp mark proliferate to as many organisations as possible. He says the tough process involved is the right one.

Tune in to hear him talk about autonomy, B Corp, his own wellbeing and more.

Get support with your journey to conscious leadership at www.consciousleaders.org.uk

Cheryl Luzet is a business leader who wants to talk about failure. She identifies it is in this space we learn the most, because, in learning what not to do, we also learn what we should be doing. So much so that at her digital marketing agency (Wagada), regularly pop the ‘failure prosecco’ to talk through these moments!In this episode, Cheryl talks about her journey to CEO and being ‘of service’ to employees (who in turn serve the clients). She shares how it felt to let go of control. She also talks about some of the challenges and opportunities of hiring young staff, working within boundaries and giving feedback.Cheryl has always wanted to create a great culture and live by organisational values. Wagada worked as a team to identify and understand their values: human, flexible, passionate and honest.She believes that these are still very much the key ways in which they work.

Bejay, at the age of 25, is a multi-award winning serial social entrepreneur and the youngest award winner of the Queen’s Award for Enterprise Promotion. He is founder of Supa Network, the Business Building Club, and many more ventures.

Bejay's leadership approach is extremely flexible, from where staff are based, to their employment contract, to how long a project will run. But this flexibility is not synonymous with chaos–it is grounded in discipline. He runs data-driven organisations that are continuously improving.

Bejay seems to recognise that to help people grow they need to shadow others and collaborate. He says “you can’t be what you can’t see” and he models the behaviours he wants others to adopt. He is keen to truly engage with the people he works with to give them facetime, whether that be online or in person, so people can tune into the work culture and feel heard.

What’s clear is that Bejay prioritises his wellbeing. He has strict routines around no meetings before 10am, cycles regularly and embraces nutrition. He’s keen to share this with colleagues and staff so they can take from it what they wish.

Susan has had a fast trajectory in law, moving from paralegal to Partner in 8 years. Despite her personal achievements, Susan shuns the limelight. She’s happy that Debenhams Ottaway’s successes are reflected in her staff and is not interested in the glory.

Susan really believes in the potential of others and is a particular advocate for women in the legal and business professions. Although her industry is male-orientated, her firm’s partnership is 50% female. She wants this to be an inspiration to her younger staff members.

Building a culture that is co-supportive is Susan’s top priority and she is keen everyone buys in. The firm itself is ‘one team’ and the plan is to build on that philosophy, putting them in a great position when it’s time to hand over to the next generation.

Ultimately, Susan wants to leave a legacy and ensure the company is on a strong footing. In doing so, she will empower those coming up through the ranks–seeing herself very much as a servant to this cause.

Since a young age, Charlotte has been trailblazing in social media. She grew up getting into the nitty gritty of platforms like MySpace and became an early adopter and expert of Twitter and Hubspot.

Now, she runs her own influencer marketing agency, SevenSix, producing purpose-led campaigns that generate a positive impact. SevenSix was born out of frustration with the industry, that companies are not getting ‘the basics’ right when it comes to accessing and managing the needs of Black talent.

Charlotte’s aim is to amplify influencers–particularly those with exciting profiles who get overlooked. She has an eye for potential and is keen to champion others.

As a young leader, she demonstrates a high-level of self-awareness–I certainly noticed how she strives to get the balance right in how much support to give her staff. Charlotte has a strong desire to ‘fix’ or care for others but also recognises she needs to understand how employees like to be supported.

She’s building something quite special at SevenSix, an environment that she wants to be both ‘safe and happy’ for employees. She recognises that her agency may not (yet) be able to pay the big bucks but they can create a special family-like environment where people can be part of driving forward this trailblazing brand.

Nicole Sadd, CEO at Rothamsted Enterprises has had a career in hospitality from hotels, to venues, to boats – she has been there and everywhere! One of her biggest challenges has been steering the ‘ship’ of an events and conference business through a pandemic.

Nicole takes us on a journey and shares the highs and the lows. She talks about the excitement and rush of the first few months of lockdown to get all their ‘ducks in a row’, ready for a July 2021 re-opening. She contrasts that with the struggle for ‘us people in events’ who often live for looking after people, when that did not happen. She talks about her own self-reflection and needing to slow down, which wasn’t something she was used to. Her sleep suffered as she dealt with the realities of cash flow. However, she protected her team, knowing that people did not need to know all the challenges she was seeing.

She is a leader who really wants to know how her team are doing--not at a superficial level but beyond that. She’s keen on regular check-ins so that people feel they can share and create an environment of safety so that people are more open with what they are struggling with, as well as what’s working.

Her passion now is to create a great culture, a great place to work as they rebuild the business further. She wants people to have more fun at work as well as innovate and bring fresh thinking.