Neil Lloyd, Managing Director – FBC Manby Bowdler
Great leadership is a bit like an elephant – easy to recognise but hard to describe. Here, Neil Lloyd, managing partner of FBC Manby Bowdler, examines some of the lessons he has learned during his time leading one of the Midlands’ most successful law firms.
What makes a good leader?
Believe social media, and you’d think the answer lies in some of the aspirational posts scattered across our timelines.
You know the kind of thing I’m talking about.
“You learn more from failure than success.”
“You are never too big to stop learning.”
“Great leaders create more great leaders.”
There’s some degree of truth in each of them, of course. But you don’t need me to tell you that running a business is a lot more complicated than that.
I’m lucky enough to be managing partner of a really successful regional law firm in FBC Manby Bowdler. We have 200 members of staff, have enjoyed strong growth for every one of the last four years and regularly feature in national guides highlighting the best legal teams.
It’s four and half years since I was made managing director – and later managing partner – and I can honestly say that I’ve learned something new about leadership every day since. Of course, I had to learn fast having been appointed just days before the country went into full scale lockdown.
For me, leadership always starts with people.
If you look after your people, they will in turn look after your clients and that will look after your business. If you can start to create that virtuous circle from day one and always keep it firmly in your sights, the future really will be rosy.
Throughout my time in business, I have stuck to a set of guiding principles which inform everything about the way I lead and have served me well at all stages of my career. They are fairness, honesty, openness, transparency and clarity.
I want to know that our success is based on treating every one of the team fairly and honestly – and firmly believe that by doing so I help plant the seeds for future success by building a platform of trust right at the heart of the business.
Transparency and clear communication is hugely important to any business which wants to take their staff with them and build the sort of powerful team ethic which can overcome even the toughest of challenges. Don’t fall into the trap of keeping too much information too close to your chest. Share as much as you can appropriately and trust in your people to respond accordingly.
Let me give you an example. We routinely share financial performance figures with the team, along with data about client satisfaction, debtor position and other business indicators, and always encourage an open conversation about them.
By doing so, we believe we empower our staff in an enormously strong way. They know exactly where we are heading, can help shape our ambition and feel an integral part of the journey we are on. That means staff satisfaction levels are high, our retention levels are excellent and we are an attractive proposition for high-quality candidates when we do need to recruit.
Building this high-trust, open, honest environment, also means we can retain a high degree of agility. When we need people to respond to something quickly, they are motivated to do so. Never was this more important than at the start of lockdown, when our team reacted brilliantly to the overnight switch to home-working or furlough and helped establish the platform for our success as we emerged from the Covid pandemic.
And it’s also good for wellbeing and mental health, which is very much at the top of our agenda. It seems crystal clear to me that you cannot get anywhere if you run your team into the ground or overload them to breaking point. Openness and transparency encourages honesty on both sides whilst also creating a working atmosphere which promotes good health.
But in all this, don’t forget to be innovative. One of the first things I did here at FBC Manby Bowdler was break down the existing structures to create smaller teams of eight or so people, each with their own leader. It’s a simple enough thing to do but the results can be outstanding. Each team is small enough for the leader to stay on top of things while building a real team ethic.
If you can do all that, you’ll be in a good place to heed my final piece of advice – to embrace the unknown. Life changes all the time and constantly throws new challenges at us. Don’t be scared of them.
Take artificial intelligence as an example. We’re one of just eight firms around the country trialling the use of AI in law as part of a research project with Lancaster University. It’s fascinating stuff and something which will be a massive part of all our lives for decades to come. We could have sat on the sidelines and let others do the work, but by being at the forefront we put ourselves in the best possible position to fully understand the technology and benefit from it wherever we can.