Leadership Reflections with Douglas Isles
An actuary by training, Douglas first joined Platinum in 2003 as an investment analyst, having spent some time at the Commonwealth Bank as a product actuary and, prior to that, as an investment manager at Aegon Asset Management in Edinburgh. Douglas left Platinum in 2008 to relocate to Singapore where he help to build Standard Chartered Bank’s equity broking business. Having re-joined Platinum in 2013 as an investment specialist, Douglas serves as a bridge between Platinum’s investment team and the financial advisory community, and is a member of the company’s Management Committee.
In this interview, I asked Douglas for his top tips and war stories about career and management.
Interview
Julia Lessing: Douglas, what's your best tip on giving feedback?
Douglas Isles: It's something I think a lot of us avoid. I had a very interesting session with someone recently - she was talking about the concept of “radical candor” - basically being really blunt with people. She told me that when you give someone good feedback it’s not always that helpful 'cause there's nothing to learn from it. We tend to say “well done, that was great” without ever telling people why it was great. But more often, people annoy us and we don't tell them.
So it’s really just about being honest. But, knowing how to be honest without causing offence can be quite daunting at first. To give good feedback or to have good conversations, I think you almost need both people to have trained in having difficult conversations. There’s sort of a formula to this whole thing. It really revolves around telling people how you feel, not judging people for their behaviours, but telling them how their actions make you feel. But I think if the other person isn't aware of the technique, it can be quite odd!
JL: What is your biggest career regret?
DI: I realized that if you passed your actuarial exams, you were pretty much guaranteed to have a comfortable rest of your life. But then you might not take many risks and just accept you are on this path. I don’t have real regrets about the path I have followed but I probably didn't give it that much deep thought.
I see people who have been forced at some point to reinvent themselves or work out where they want to go. I also meet people who have ended up doing fascinatingly exciting things. So I have had a good career, a fortunate life, all that stuff, but the most exciting things might not seem to happen because of this quite predictable path.
JL: Do you think managers are born or made?
DI: I suspect there's always going to be elements of both. I can remember, I was often picked as a captain in teams at school and since I kept being captain of things I just always assumed I would end up being the leader. So a big lesson going into workplace was no one was like tapping me on the shoulder for the next step. People who went on graduate programs, maybe certain elements were more structured, but all the way through school and into university I believed there was a “born element” to being a leader. Then going into the workplace I probably spent 15 years or so wondering when someone was going to ask me to step up. I was going to be picked as a captain, but at school rugby that was really just to go and toss a coin.
So I think if you start to believe your own hype, or think you have been born with something as you get older I think you discover many leaders “made”. They might work harder, they might try harder, or they might work out the rules of the game, or get lucky breaks and get the right training or whatever it is. So while you can get a fortunate head start in life at the end it's a long game and I suspect the “made” part is probably more important in the long run.
The better you do at school and the easier school is, the harder work could become for you because if you just assume that you're always picked and you’ll always continue to be picked. You just got used to always being asked and then in a workplace, you're not just asked but have to earn the right. And there are lots of other people around you with more relevant experience at particular times and I found that quite hard to deal with.
JL: How do you approach difficult conversations?
DI: I see a lot of parallels with home life. So say you have conflict with your partner or your children, the techniques we’re taught are very similar. Just explaining how something makes you feel is probably the best tip I could give you.
So I've learned firstly this idea of explaining the impact, and trying to make it as neutral as possible. So when XYZ happened it made me feel such and such. I think it's almost disarming for the other person to realize that something they have done is actually having an impact on someone else.
I think in the corporate world, particularly in financial services, things can be quite intangible. So to bring that emotional element to the front, is quite confronting in a funny way. The important thing is to label it.
But, unless you can point to actual events quite quickly after they've happened, the ability to give feedback becomes very limited. So it's important to be prompt. I've a colleague who phoned me up after a meeting recently and just said “I didn't like the way that meeting went”. And maybe before knowing how to think about these conversations that might have made me defensive. But now I understand better, I want to know what made him feel uncomfortable. And if it was my behaviour that didn't make him feel comfortable, I would want to know what is it that I did, and what could I learn from that? And if it was me, then while I may not get it right the next time, I know he would make me aware of it again. The upshot is we end up having to work on it and then generally improve together.
But it’s hard if instead you turn to someone else and just say “that person's behaviour is annoying me” and you never address the thing head on. We try to have a code in the office where if someone is a problem, you go to them. The problem can be if that person is senior to you, particularly for more junior people, so there is the out to go to their manager if you can’t get a response. The other part is that you need to promise you won't discuss it with anyone else. The feedback should stay between the “offender” and the “offended”.
JL: What's your advice on how to plan a non-traditional career path?
DI: When you start, you need to know why you entered actuarial and your own motivations. We are all different. But for me, I knew from the beginning that I liked the idea of investing. I joined an life insurance business that had an investment department and so I tried to find ways to start conversations with people in the investment department. I knew what I was interested in and where I wanted to go so I tried to work that out.
Finding opportunities is interesting and I have a sense that if you're a bit more of an original thinker or you want to do things a bit differently, you will appeal to people who are original thinkers and like to do things differently. So you probably wouldn't fit into a very traditional path if you are like that.
Getting involved in different things is important so that you meet lots of people. Doors open – it’s similar to asking: How do you make friends? How do you date? How did you do all these kinds of things? I think it's very similar, you’ve just got to put yourself in the position that you will be exposed to people closer to where you want to get to.
You need to express or show what it is that makes you different. You can show that by talking to people and contributing. So whether it's contributing through a profession, whether it's joining other groups of interest, or going on courses there are lots of great ways to meet people and try things out. I’m doing a creative writing course at the moment in my own time, a bit of fun. I did a Python course last month, I did a Design Thinking course last year at Stanford (virtually) and every time you do these things you meet different people. You get different perspectives.
JL: How do you manage year-end pressure and conflicting priorities in the lead up to Christmas?
DI: Often the pressure comes from the person above you not managing their time particularly well. I've seen situations where a guy spent all day in meetings and then, gave junior staff the tasks at the end of the day that he needed for his meetings tomorrow. It may seem difficult, but try and call out the unacceptable “being the victim of someone else’s poor time management”. It feels high risk, but it's important to try and set the right boundaries. I think COVID has definitely helped as well with this idea of people being a little bit more flexible, so I suspect it’s easier to have these conversations now than it was two years ago.
JL: As you become more senior, how do you juggle work and family/life as expectations increase?
DI: In terms of this work, family, life balance, I have not been very good at it. So I think you can put too much emphasis on work. I've got better at that balance, but at the same time my kids have got older.
So I think at the point where that balance was critical, I got it wrong. I was too skewed too heavily towards work. As I try and get that balance back, unfortunately they're getting older, there's not so many times they want to do things with their Dad. But I think the younger you can learn this, the better. If I could appeal to people in their early 30s that if they think about things, try to get that balance in place as early as you can because I think it makes it makes a big difference.
JL: Looking back, are there any key pivot points or points where you wish you’d taken more risks at work or with your career?
DI: I've probably changed two or three things in my life. I left Scotland 'cause I wanted to come to Australia. That was what I wanted but the first job I had here didn't really work for me, and then I found Platinum, which is the company I'm actually with now. That was fortunate, via a newspaper ad. So I got what I wanted in coming to Australia, but had to consolidate for a year before I found what I really wanted to do.
And then I joke now that I wanted to become “rich and famous” but I took a job in Singapore, and again the first job I went to didn’t fit. But then I became a stock broker for a few years. It was a lot of fun and that got my confidence back. But there was a pivot point, because I realized at that time, I wasn't going to become a fund manager as a young adult. It had been the natural path I was going along, but instead I had to change, and I thought, I'll use my people facing skills and an understanding of investment rather than being the investor.
Later, I came back to Australia and to the company I was with before. Here there was a lesson I often share with people that leaving a place well can create opportunities down the track. Having resigned from Platinum in 2008 I worked my notice period after resigning, and when I finally left and the same thing had happened leaving Scotland, and Singapore, I hadn’t suddenly walked out the door. Often you find, someone resigns and an hour later you never see them again.
So leaving somewhere in good terms and in a good way I was fortunate three times, maybe ‘cause I've moved countries that I've left on really good terms and I stayed in touch as friends with my old colleagues. That helped bring me back, I think, so yeah, I think a lot of people they're in a haste to get out the door and they end up closing doors behind them.
JL: You’ve changed jobs and moved around the world. What are your top tips when leaving employers?
DI: I think it's really important especially for young people, they can often be in a hurry to get to the next thing, and I would say they can leave badly. They can leave in a hurry and they may say things that are derogatory about where they've been. If you step back and think, as you go through life, where are your best opportunities going to come from? People you've worked with. You spend a lot of time with them. They're probably your best future opportunities.
JL: So I'm really curious Douglas. You've talked about the importance of sharing feelings and emotions and how you're feeling about something that's happened or what someone is doing. What's your take on thoughts versus emotions in the workplace and how to sort of navigate that feeling you know, touchy feely sort of stuff that sometimes doesn't always feel like it's as easy to raise.
DI: Yeah, so it's interesting. I don't know the answer to this, but, so I'm in my mid 40s and I see a lot of people around my age and they’re going on this journey of discovery and I always wonder if the if the journey of discovery is because of age. Like, is it because you're in your 40s and you get to that point and you start thinking about things?
Probably five years ago, I had a lot of meetings where I didn't feel I conducted myself as well as I should have done. I was quite defensive and I often found that if someone was challenging the performance of our companies’ funds then I had this urge to want to prove that I was smarter than the person challenging me.
So I went to see a counsellor/ psychologist that we use through the firm. I was hoping (and probably actuaries would identify with this) that there’d be a formula or a chemical reaction that I could follow through and everything would be fine every time I felt under threat, if I followed some steps.
And there was an element of that to extent that you should try and identify the feeling you get so you knew when you might go into that mode. Maybe it’s like trying to walk away or step back, even though you couldn't in a room. But at least to mentally step back.
But the bit I came away with was that really it was all about not putting too much emphasis on your workplace identity. Because when your workplace identity was being threatened via someone who was challenging the firm’s investment outcomes, if you didn't have enough things outside of work, then effectively you felt like you were being personally attacked as well.
JL: Thanks Douglas. Do you have any final tips for actually stepping into their first management roles?
DI: Think about things people have done to you, that made you feel good and things that people have done to you, that made you feel uncomfortable. Then try not to do the uncomfortable ones and try to do more of the good ones.
Accept you will make mistakes because not many people are very good at things when they do them for the first time. But, everyone did something for the first time at one point, so don't think you're too far away from the next level, or from success.
JL: Some really great gems in there. Douglas. Thank you so much!
