Insight Into Women Leaders

Natalie Ceeney, CEO, Financial Ombudsman Service

Brompton Associates is running a series of interviews with Women Leaders to get an insight into their unique challenges and contributions to business. We wanted to know how these successful Women Leaders got on in the workplace so that other women can gain inspiration and key learnings from them.

We interviewed Natalie Ceeney just before she moved from CEO of the National Archives to becoming CEO for The Financial Services Ombudsman.

We asked Natalie, “What challenges have you faced as a woman leader?” She responded by saying “well it’s very hard to answer that question because I haven’t experienced being a leader as a man so I really can’t compare! I tend to think of myself as a Leader, rather than a Female Leader so maybe I can just answer the question from that perspective? The classic challenges that I face are the usual ones, like setting a vision, making sure everyone is bought into that etc... they are challenges that every leader faces and I find them intellectually challenging which I enjoy.”

We discussed the fact that Natalie has never felt any barriers to success in business because she is a woman; however she has mentored many women in middle management and has noticed that they often fear ‘putting their heads above the parapet’. Natalie feels strongly that it is this fear and limiting beliefs about ourselves as women that can hold us back. She has never experienced this fear personally, she stated “I consider myself as fairly bright and can read up on things. I’ve never had that self limiting belief that I can’t do something in the workplace – sure I know what I’m good at and what I’m not and what I like too, for example I’d hate to have to run a marathon, so I just wouldn’t do it, but at work I’ve always found stretching myself intellectually stimulating and really enjoy it. Work is my equivalent of fun, I love learning and doing new things”.

Natalie is passionate about developing people and really enjoys being able to spot talent in an organisation and encourage those people to take a risk and go for a more senior role. She said that she promotes people who take risks, however she comes across lots of women in middle management, who are very bright but don’t put themselves forward for a role because they think they can’t do everything on the job spec. As she rightly states, she doesn’t have the capacity to try and find all these women and actively give them the courage and self belief to move up the career ladder, she needs these women to be coming to her and applying for those roles. “If a man puts himself forward for a role and a better woman doesn’t it has to go to the man. Then it’s a self fulfilling prophecy where women can say, ‘you see I knew it would go to a man’ etc...”

We asked Natalie “What do you think Women bring to Organisations?”

She replied “I don’t like to generalise because I’ve met a lot so great male leaders and a lot of bad female leaders and vice versa, but if I was to generalise hugely, I think women are sometimes better at resolving disputes because we don’t tend to pick fights, but we often build relationships which allow us to resolve issues more calmly.”

We asked Natalie if she had any top tips for our readers who might identify with some of the middle management women you have mentored and want to push past their own barriers to success.

Natalie thinks that one of the most important things that she does is to build a support network around you quickly so you can pick up the phone and ask for help when you need it. She said women naturally do this with their friends and family, so it’s just a matter of applying this skill in the workplace. She used to think that to ring people up and ask to meet them for coffee was a very male thing to do and that she shouldn’t self-promote, but then she realised that people like to be asked for coffee and like to be able to help you if you need them. Similarly it’s a two way thing where she can also help them.

“The way I make it safe is by building a network of people around me. I think we should view going for coffee with someone in our network as work and we can then ask them, ‘who else should I meet’ and continue to extend our source of advice”.

Thanks to Natalie Ceeney for her valuable time and great insights into her attitude to going for promotions, going for coffee and taking some risks. Natalie is already at the top, so her methods work. If we can see what we are thinking/doing differently, then we have an idea of what we need to change to become more senior within our organisations and really make a difference as Leaders.

NOTE: Natalie often speaks informally over coffee to groups of 20 -30 women who have been managers for only a couple of years about her experiences in her career, what she has done wrong and what she wished she’d known when she was at their stage in their career. She often has feedback about how her speaking has de-mystified the CEO role and allowed the audience to feel that perhaps it is not so unreachable. So if you’d like to invite Natalie to speak with you let us know and we’ll see if we can arrange it for you.