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.