Episode 30 – Inclusion: Interview with Derek Bruce

Derek has a great background in leadership and people development, consultancy, and business communication. Which he gets from working with market-leading global organizations in the Financial Services, Media, Retail, and Engineering industries. He knows the business culture and well as world culture. Born in the UK, and living between Amsterdam and Milan right now he also hosts large scale digital and physical events for industry-leading organisations as well as speaking at global seminars and conferences. He also prides himself on building trust and long-term relationships to help people to accomplish their goals. These are also the principles of his own organisation, Derek Bruce Associates.

You Can Read the Transcript of Our Interview Below:

Nathan Simmonds:

Welcome to Sticky Interviews. I'm Nathan Simmonds, senior leadership coach and trainer for MBM, Making Business Matter, the home of Sticky Learning. We are the provider of leadership development and soft skills training to the grocery and manufacturing industry. The idea of these interviews is to share great ideas, great concepts, and great ways these skills are being used to help you be the best version of you in the work that you do. Welcome to the show.

Nathan Simmonds:

Welcome to this Sticky Interview with me, Nathan Simmonds, senior leadership coach and trainer for MBM, Making Business Matter. I've got the great pleasure of interviewing and having a conversation with Derek Bruce. We've already had one connection conversation and I got to dig into a little bit about his history, his experience. A phenomenal buy and I love reading some of this stuff.

Nathan Simmonds:

Background in leadership and people development, consultancy and business communication, which he gets from working with market leading global organizations in the financial services, media, retail, engineering industries. But not only that, he knows business culture as well as world culture. Born originally in the UK, in Brixton, he's living between Amsterdam and Milan right now, hosting large scale digital and physical events for industry leading organizations, as well as speaking at global seminars and conferences. That in itself, Derek, is pretty phenomenal. It's, I guess, some of the life that we all wish and aspire to get to, being able to do some of that stuff.

Focuses on leadership and people development, consultancy, and business communication

 

Nathan Simmonds:

The best bit about him is this bit, I love it, and I know this because I feel this in the conversation we have, he prides himself on building trust and long-term relationships to help people accomplish their goals. We're going to dig into some more of that later on in this conversation, because there's some really critical, vital pieces of work that you're bringing your attention to, which I definitely want you to put the lens on today. And it says, these are also the principles of his own organization, Derek Bruce Associates. Absolutely 100%, Derek, welcome to here, welcome to the show. Thank you very much for being here.

Derek Bruce:

Cheers for the invite.

Nathan Simmonds:

Always. First question for me, for anyone that I'm interviewing, why do you do what you do?

Derek Bruce:

It's kind of a funny story. I kind of fell into it. So years and years and years ago I was working for Prudential, and applied for many jobs, got into there and started working, believe it or not, on an IT help desk. I was helping people do computer thing, turn it off, turn it on again, worked wonders.

Derek Bruce:

But I kind of then fell into learning and development because we as a team were helping people with IT systems, and through my career at Prudential, and they gave some awesome development, it's a great environment to work in, they really supported their staff. In my almost 13 years there I kind of moved from IT, presenting IT, into presenting solutions for sales, and then into learning development, and then into leadership development and change. So I do what I do because I like it but I kind of fell into it. It wasn't a plan to get to this point, unfortunately.

Nathan Simmonds:

For me, that's strange in itself because most people end up going into IT because okay, There's a stereotype of people that go and work at IT help desks, I can't get away from that. And most people go there. I'm a nerd, I'm a geek, I'm a reformed geek, I used to play Dungeons & Dragons and those sorts of things. It tends to be those sort of people that go to work for IT help desks, and it's very rare for my view of the world that you see people coming out of that space to go into more learning and development and people spaces. But the part you highlighted there, which was phenomenal, was it's kind of about that Prudential creating that right environment for you.

Derek Bruce:

Yeah. It's a company which, if I now look back at where I've worked, and I've worked at some great companies, but it was probably slightly ahead of its time in terms of the way they cared about staff, the inclusion of making people being able to be the best they can be.

Derek Bruce:

They invested, for example, in my CIPD qualification. They paid me to actually be qualified to do learning and development while I was working there. They then helped my career move from learning and development to get experience with doing sales stuff as well, experience with doing project management, and this was all part of how almost the DNA of the organization was, which was to get the most out of people, by creating the right environment where they could do the best. And quickly we realized that I could tell people to do the IT stuff, but it wasn't really what my skillset was. So that's why I moved into the L&D role.

Nathan Simmonds:

That's phenomenal. Especially when you look at the financial sector, and I don't know if it's a historic thing or it's more a recent thing, is a lot of the financial industry is purely about the numbers, not necessarily about the culture. I certainly didn't feel a lot of that when I was in the financial sector. It's about how many sales, how many numbers, because that's what they're selling at the table, money, which is a number. Whereas Prudential created this right kind of incubator to support understanding actually where your best skills are, where to develop you, and how to support you making that journey as well.

Derek Bruce:

Yeah. It's funny because if I look back at some of the experiences which were provided to me and the fact that they would develop people, it was... The development was key, they wanted you to actually be the best you could be, as I mentioned, and the environment and inclusion piece was really important. But also the engagement of the employees was important. So everything from... I worked in 142 Holborn Bars, which is this beautiful old building in the center of London and it's one of those places you walk into, kind of like your Harry Potter building, and you feel the history, you feel what's happened there before. My first day I remember vividly, I was only like 18, 19, I was taking a tour around the building and it had an underground theater, it had a gym, it had all this stuff from god knows where and when, financial services had all been started.

Derek Bruce:

And on my first Friday a lady came around with a drinks trolley, with alcohol as well, and was kind of like every floor people could just have a drink, Friday afternoon, just kind of stop and talk to your colleagues, unwind together. And for me as an 18 year old going into an organization and that environment, it was kind of like okay, this is kind of surreal but it's awesome.

Derek Bruce:

And it kind of gained also, because people who worked for Pru, we used to call it Pru, would also go above and beyond because the environment was so good because you felt you were part of a huge team and huge organization which cared about you. We kind of made sure you did more to make sure we were channeling success as well. So yeah, it was an amazing experience.

Nathan Simmonds:

It's interesting hearing you say that. A Friday afternoon, everything kind of winds down, people get together and actually have a conversation. And it's not that you've wound down and you want to go to the bar and you want to do happy hour just to kind of drink your problems and your frustrations of the week. You stop and you have a social interaction with people.

Nathan Simmonds:

I know at Holland or certain areas in the Netherlands when I was living there, they were very big on this kind of four day work week and finishing at a very specific time and you don't take your work home with you. And there is a big focus on business is going to four day weeks, in some places three day weeks, and we're experiencing this with COVID-19, people are getting more work done because they're at home and they're getting it done in shorter amounts of time, they're getting more attention to it.

Nathan Simmonds:

And like you say, you're willing to give more because you know when you get to Friday afternoon, "I've done my work, I've contributed, I've added value, now I can actually have a moment and enjoy this social interaction." Which you just don't have.

Derek Bruce:

I think one of the things which you just reminded me, it also was the first company I worked for but it also didn't have presenteeism mindset. So lots of organizations, and I've got lots of friends across London, Italy, Amsterdam, suffer from organizations which feel people have to be there to make sure they're doing the work. This was back, as I said, in the later '80s, early '90s, and still the focus was on what you did, what you produced, how you contributed, and it wasn't measured by you being sat on a seat with a screen in front of you doing stuff, it was measuring the contribution to the work, to the experience of our customers, to the project, to the team. And again,