Leading with…Kenneth Yau
In our latest interview, Kenneth Yau – senior experience lead at Nationwide Building Society – shares his career path, explains why Ted Lasso is a lesson in leadership, and encourages us to trust our spidey senses.
Firstly, can you tell us a bit about your path to leadership?
I’m on my third career right now and the combination of all the things I’ve learned across all my careers so far have helped me get to where I am now in a general design leadership role.
My first career was in management consultancy, my second in project and programme management, and my current career in design started in 2007 when I joined eBay as a content manager responsible for the UK site.
eBay were looking for someone who could write a variety of types of content for a range of audiences, had good commercial acumen, and the ability to work with ‘the business’ — product owners, customer support, legal, and so on — as well as work with external partners. At the time, that wasn’t a common combination of skills or experience for people working in content. The experience I gained from my first two careers helped me do even more than that, and establish credibility as someone who could think strategically and take a leadership role in content.
With that experience on my CV, I started freelancing and contracting, during which time I worked on projects where I was able to use and build leadership skills on top of the ‘doing’ work. Long story short, my inability to stay in my lane and stick to ‘just’ being a content designer when I went to contract with Nationwide Building Society led to me being asked to head up the whole design team on the project, including product designers and researchers. Thanks to Covid, that project closed down, and I moved to my current role at Nationwide, which is a senior design leadership position, covering a portfolio of projects and teams.
What was the biggest shock for you when you moved from IC (individual contributor) to leadership?
I’m not sure there was anything I would consider a shock. The hardest part of a move from IC to leadership — and I believe this applies to a lot of careers — is the interim stage when you’re being asked to be a player-manager: doing the doing and the management as well. If that’s not done right, you end up doing two jobs rather than gaining useful experience to help you take the step into senior leadership.
Have you found any great resources to help you so far in your leadership career?
People ≠ resources, but my peers have been the greatest help. I’ve been lucky to have worked with an incredibly talented set of people during my working life who have been generous with their time and advice. I’ve learned much more about leadership from working with them on projects than from any leader, training, conference, community, book or article.
That said, I would highly recommend the Positive Power & Influence programme, which gives you a ridiculously useful and practical model of different influencing styles and when to use them. Being able to influence effectively is essential as a leader, not just for yourself but to help your team. It’s by far and away the best training course I’ve ever been on, not just for its content but also for how it’s run, with its perfect blend of theory and practice.
Also, watch Ted Lasso. I’m serious! There are insightful lessons about kindness and leadership to be taken from this show. (And it’s not really about football/soccer, despite the set-up.)
What advice would you give new leaders?
Understand the difference between a leader and a manager; sometimes you need to lead, sometimes you need to manage. Know that you can’t (shouldn’t, really) please everyone. Prioritise ruthlessly. Be quick to praise but don’t shy away from difficult conversations. Familiarise yourself with radical candour. Keep learning from the people around you. Be strong enough to admit when you don’t have the answer and recognise the situations when you don’t need to have all the information to proceed. Give space to talented people to do their thing. Listen.
Most of all, be kind: to yourself, to the people you lead, to the people you work with.
What superpower do you have that helps you most in your work?
Curiosity. It stops me jumping to conclusions and helps me ask good questions. It’s what drives me to keep learning and it makes me interested in people and finding out what makes them tick. Think about how you feel when anyone, let alone a leader you work for, shows a genuine interest in you and takes time to understand you and your work
What would you tell your younger self knowing what you know now about your career?
Success isn’t about how much you earn or how senior you are. You will have more than one career, and at least one of those careers doesn’t exist yet.
You will make mistakes — don’t beat yourself up about them but make sure you learn from them and be quick to apologise and take responsibility, especially if your mistake has affected someone.
Choose where you work carefully. Be quick to get out if it doesn’t feel right. Your spidey senses are usually right.
People will remember you as a person and how you treated them more than your work. Kindness, empathy, and curiosity will take you as far as you want to go — at the right places.
Kenneth is a speaker at our next leadership panel event on 9th December. Tickets are available now.
