July 2024 - Uncover Recruitment

When you’re building your career, there are key skills that you need to develop in order to progress. On Episode 21 of The UNCOVER Pod I was joined by Trish Turnham, the Head of Risk & Compliance at Streathers Solicitors LLP and Streathers Highgate LLP, to discuss the skills and attributes that she looks for in her own team. Here are her insights:

“Effective communication is absolutely essential in this job. Your assessment of a problem needs to be methodical, clear, concise and as reader-friendly as possible, because senior people are approached with lots of questions every day, and their brains can’t handle the information overload. If you as an analyst can sharpen your communication to make it as effective and easy to digest as possible, that is a hugely beneficial and transferable skill.

The other is being efficient and quick. It’s one thing to provide the correct position, but it’s also important to do it in good time. Showing the client that you’re available to them and you’ve carefully considered their question builds trust. Then, a client would be willing to come to you again if they had another question. That’s how I built my relationships in practice over the years.

It’s okay to speak up about what you need. Vulnerability is really welcoming in this industry, and it actually encourages people to open up about what’s not working for them. If someone comes across to me as too perfect, I might not want to open up to them about my mistakes. Being a compliance professional in this day and age, especially as a senior person, means sharing the horror stories that shaped your approach, your thinking, and your culture because they can help someone else too.

The last thing I’m going to say is don’t rush your career for the sake of salary and title. Take your time to learn your craft. High-performing salespeople, when they’re promoted to the manager level, might perform not so well because it will take them time to adjust to it. So my advice to everyone in the industry, or wanting to get into the industry, is to make sure that they take pride in building their experience. That can’t be fast-tracked.”

To find out more about developing your skills in the Legal Risk & Compliance sector, tune into Episode 21 of The UNCOVER Pod here.

On Episode 20 of The UNCOVER Pod, Alex Ktorides, the Head of Risk & Compliance at Bristows LLP, joined us to share some insights on how to navigate your career with confidence and clarity. He also shared his advice for more senior professionals who are leading Legal Risk & Compliance teams, specifically around building a positive culture that brings out the best in your colleagues. Read on to find out how you can become a better leader by influencing your team’s culture.

What strategies have you found most effective for managing and motivating teams within the sector?

You learn on the job. Managing people is something that people take to quickly or otherwise. In terms of strategies to motivate a team, I have learned through trial and error that some things work better than others. They’re not particular to a law firm or to a risk function, they are more general things that apply to being a boss anywhere. Being a good boss is really important, and you can do that by showing that you’re consistent, being responsible and trying to give people the tools that they need to thrive. I tend to blame myself if something doesn’t go how I want. Next, I’ll ask the question ‘What is it that I didn’t do to help that person to do their best?’

Law firms or risk and compliance teams can be, if you’re not careful, quite isolating for people. You’re there to make sure that the guardrails are up, and that the firm can feel confident to do what it does really well. Make sure that people feel motivated and that they understand what’s going on in the business. It’s important that your team understand that they’re part of the firm – and a really important part at that. Share what’s going on, even just about the day’s work, so they feel aligned and not isolated.

I think it’s important to show the impact of what they’re doing as well. So, for example, we go through some practical things like weekly stats in terms of file openings, conflict checks, etc. Sometimes you can highlight something that directly shows what we did leading to a pitch succeeding, or a piece of work getting done in a way that really pleased the client. Always link the value of what they’re doing.

Be a good delegator as well. People want to move up, and for their skills to grow. Try to motivate people by letting them have more responsibility when they’re ready and when they want it. Recognise that people have different speeds too. Some people are very happy with the trajectory they’re on, others naturally want to push the boundaries. It’s up to you to tailor your approach and motivate people based on them as individuals.

How do you go about cultivating a culture of engagement and collaboration within your team?

Highlighting real-life examples of where we have made a direct impact on the wider business really improves engagement. I want to make sure that I share genuine examples with people so they feel engaged. What we do in the risk and compliance team is really pervasive throughout the whole business. That’s only getting stronger with the regulatory focus on culture and behaviours and things like that. Even though you’re just checking company structure charts in order to do a small part of the file opening, without that, a business will absolutely die, particularly these days with so much regulatory scrutiny. So I try and talk to them about why we are doing things, not just the specific task itself, but the bigger picture.

Simple things like sharing the breaches register with the team or talking about bigger projects that they might be involved in are also important. I make sure that I talk to the team, see what they’re seeing, and seek out their opinions. I really do value the opinions of everyone on the team. People feel engaged when you show them that they’re valued by trying to incorporate some of their ideas.

To hear more from Alex, tune into Episode 20 of The UNCOVER Pod here.