My Biggest Lesson: Rania Robinson

The biggest lesson I learnt in my career has been quite a recent one. It was the expression  “just hand the monkey back”. 

It was the first time I'd actually heard it, so I had to Google it. Turns out, apparently, it’s a term that's quite commonly used in business. It basically means the monkey is the problem. 

Quite often, what happens between leaders, managers and their teams is that they get given ‘the monkey’ – they’re handed a problem. It happens very easily – when you’ve got the experience and personality that got you into a leadership or management position for this to happen, as you are a good problem-solver. It’s therefore natural to just solve (or want to solve) the problem, or feel like you need to solve it for your team – as opposed to actually getting them to figure it out as part of their development and growth.

That's a leader's true role; not to solve everything, but to create the right environment for the best things to happen. I had to “pass the monkey back!” 

It’s about not feeling like all the responsibility sits with me to figure it all out. It feels really obvious actually, but it's often the most obvious things that we get wrong. I think particularly if you're a business owner, there's a sense of responsibility that you can't help but try to solve every problem. 

In recent years, I’ve started to think about long term succession management plans and stepping back from the business. It made me realise that, actually, it’s a dysfunctional organisation if it cannot operate without that heightened level of input from you. I’m the chief executive and co-owner of Quiet Storm, which was sold a few years ago to become an employee-owned trust. This kind of thought is even more pertinent when you become an employee-owned trust, because the whole point of that model is that the employees take ownership and responsibility for the business – they’re the future beneficiaries and owners of the business. 

It was post-sale, and I had brought in a trustee. Part of the employee ownership trust is you have to have independent trustees who come and sit on the trust and act as an objective perspective and point of view between the shareholders, the staff, and the management team.

The person who taught me this lesson was Carol Reay, who I met through WACL (Women in Advertising & Communications Leadership). She was part of this network and had run her own business, and was one of the first women in the ‘90s to have her name on a door of an agency - an independent called Mellors Reay. She is somebody who's been exactly in my position running a business and her insight helped me understand the idea of stepping back and empowering teams.

If you want high performing teams, they need to be equipped to problem-solve and figure things out. After all, it’s very easy to just pass the problem to somebody else and forget about it, particularly if that person's so willing to take it.

I've got a huge amount of admiration for Carol. She'd been there. Done it. Seen it. And she communicated her wisdom with warmth and generosity. In fact, I’d been toying with the idea of bringing her in as a non-exec for ages. Then, I got asked to become president of WACL and she was on my executive committee.

I was the president during the 100th year for the club, and she was leading the ‘Hundredth’ committee who were responsible for the 100 year celebrations. When we sold the business and became a trust, I asked her to become a trustee.

We've subsequently become very good friends. She challenges me, but in a kind way. I've got a lot of respect for her. Her advice struck such a chord with me because I'm somebody that has a slightly disproportionate sense of responsibility. I think that happens probably with a lot of people that get into these positions, because it's their ‘taking responsibility’ that's gotten them there. 

I needed to hear it. I needed to be given permission that “No, you don't have to take responsibility for everything, actually. That's not what it means to be a leader.” For me, it really resonated because it was a bit of a weight off! It's crazy, isn't it? I've been in leadership roles for many, many years. And it's quite late in my career to have had that level of insight and understanding.

I’ve stepped back from the business quite a lot in the last year or two. And the reason I've been able to step back is because I have been passing the monkey back to people, and people have been taking it. And that's the point - people do help and people will take the monkey.

The problem is if you're always trying to solve problems and if you give people the answers the whole time, that stops them thinking and we can be a little bit mentally lazy when we're under a lot of pressure. It can be quite easy to just go “okay, I don't need to think about that. I’ve seen it myself and it has empowered my team, who have really stepped up.” I would go as far to say I think I've got stronger performing people now, because of it. 

It’s also enabled me to get a higher level perspective of the business. I’ve found when you're too close to things, you can't make good decisions anyway, so it's good to have a bit of distance. I was so run ragged and burned out and it felt like the weight of the world was on my shoulders. I can definitely say I sleep better now!

I’ve found myself also re-evaluating and using it in other scenarios outside my professional career. We know that the mental load at home sits with the woman mostly, and I'm no different even though I run a business. I would be lying if I said there weren't times where I've got this kind of impulse to fix a problem or have an impulse to solve an issue, but I think twice about it now. 

I recognise that it's not always the right thing to do. Sometimes it's totally appropriate. You do need to step in for whatever reason, if an issue requires that kind of level of management or leadership. But for the most part, you don't need to do that.

I am trying to encourage my leadership team to do a similar thing, and empower their teams to take the monkey back. And so, it percolates down into the business across the board, and everybody takes responsibility in their areas.