#EdInfluence
In his inimitable style, Nick unearths the secrets of good leadership from his guests.
Trusted by thousands of education providers across the country, Browne Jacobson is an award winning national law firm helping clients and partner organisations shape and influence education policy.
#EdInfluence
S04 - E06 with Sara Burks
In this episode, we hear from Sara Burks, the Founder and Managing Director of Adaptis Limited. Sara excels in getting the best from people during transformational change through great leadership.
Leadership often begins long before we have any formal understanding of what it means. Sara, discovered this when her school report stated: "Sara is a born leader. The problem is she leads people in the wrong direction." This early assessment followed her organising a sit-down strike during a netball tournament – a moment that sparked her lifelong exploration of leadership principles.
Through her conversation with Nick MacKenzie, Sara reveals how these formative experiences shaped her journey from rebellious student to corporate board member at just 29.
Sara believes purpose to be integral to resilience and the cornerstone of effective leadership – creating a sense of purpose that helps teams persevere through difficulties. Effective leadership isn't just about strategies or outcomes, but about connection, purpose, and the fulfilment that comes from helping others thrive.
Let us know what you think of this episode - drop us a message and connect via LinkedIn.
Welcome to the latest episode of Ed Influence. I'm Nick McKenzie from Browne Jacobson, and today I'm delighted to be joined by Sara Burks, founder and MD of Adaptis. Thank you, Sara, for joining me today. I wanted to start by inviting you to tell me a story from your life that would give you a picture of who you are.
Sara Burks:So I actually thought about this question because I listened to some of the other podcasts and it's a story not well, it does actually tell, to say something about who I am, but it's also about my first thoughts about leadership, because that's been my whole profession. As you say, I'm the founder of Adaptis and we've been in business now for 22 years and all we do is run leadership programs in one way or another, either personal leadership or leadership of others. And so what's quite interesting because sadly, two years years ago my mother passed away and in the last few months we've been going through our home to sort everything out because the house has been sold. And during the process of doing that I came across my old school reports, and these were in the days when teachers were obviously quite harsh. They wanted to be. There were some very funny ones, and one, for example, said Sara would have been in the first team of hockey if she'd ever come to the practice sessions, which I don't know why. It made me chuckle. I can't. I don't know what I was doing, that I couldn't have time to go to any of the practice sessions, but apparently I didn't, but one that stuck in my mind, which I remember at the time, and then I saw it again in writing was that the head of my tutor group had written the summary of the school report and he had written Sara is a born leader.
Sara Burks:The problem is she leads people in the wrong direction, and it was a good time being quite perturbed by that and not really understanding it. I remember it also related to a time when I think I'd organised a sit down strike in netball and so there was a netball tournament going on. I don't even remember what the big issue was, but something had happened that obviously I didn't agree with and other people also didn't agree with, and so we decided to do a sit-down strike, and I remember at the time that this caused a lot of problems for me. I think I was I was at boarding school, so I think I was gated, as we called it for the rest of the term, which meant you weren't allowed to go off to school grounds, which wasn't fun.
Sara Burks:But I remember at the time and when I looked at it again, it all came back to me, just not really understanding what that meant, that I was a leader but led people in the wrong direction, because, of course, for me that was the right direction. We had an issue and we needed to do something about it. Also, it was the first time I'd ever thought of leadership and what that actually meant, and my parents weren't big fans of discussing our school reports, so we didn't ever have a conversation about it, and so I never really talked to anyone about what that meant. But I could just remember not really understanding what what leadership was. It was the first time, I think, that I realised that such a thing existed, if you like, but without any sort of way of really considering what that really meant.
Sara Burks:But maybe it does say something about me because, although I actually loved school I was, I loved my school days I obviously was at times rebellious, as, as people would have thought of it, and so maybe that's what he was referring to that sometimes I was rebellious and wasn't following the normal line. That's the only thing I can think.
Sara Burks:But as I say it was the first time I'd ever heard that word.
Sara Burks:I think, or even thought about it as an idea, so it's sort of interesting that ended up making a career out of it. It's just one thing that came to mind there.
Nick MacKenzie:Yes, so it's interesting. So do you think it's something you're going to carry on thinking about, reflecting on trying to understand, or you're going to let it go?
Sara Burks:I think it's just highlighted to me how early we start to form as leaders, let's say. And actually a couple of years ago my niece invited me to come to her school because she was the head of the army cadet force or something. I can't even remember exactly what her title was, and it was the. They were doing a parade and she asked me if I wanted to come and watch this parade. And before the parade I was talking to her and she was saying oh, I've got my pockets are full of chocolates and sweets, because while we're all standing still for long periods of times, I don't want my team to feel uncomfortable, so I'll be passing back through the group some sweets and chocolates and so on to keep everyone, you know, feeling good about themselves. And again, I was really struck by how she was probably 14 or something of how she was really thinking about her, her responsibilities as a leader. And I asked her about it and again she was a bit like me. She would.
Sara Burks:She didn't really understand the question she just said no, well, that just seems like the logical thing to do, and so, again, it struck me how early you start to form our ideas of leadership, even if we don't even know that's what we're doing, and then how, when we come into our corporate lives, where leadership is much more of a kind of established thing, actually, again, quite often we find ourselves being promoted into a team leader role or something like that, without any real idea of what that actually means. And that's really what my whole career has been formed on is helping people to understand what that means. So I do think it's a work in progress. I don't think come to a solution or a conclusion would be a better word of what I mean by leadership, but I just know that it exists.
Nick MacKenzie:It's interesting when I reflect back on these discussions I had with my guest, Sara. The vast majority of people on that first question go to something in those relatively formative years I don't know somewhere between 10 and 20. It might flex a bit, but so many people go there, Bringing it perhaps more into the corporate world. Though you've had a variety of different leadership roles for your career before founding Adaptis, do you think there's something that connects those roles and if so, what would you say it was?
Sara Burks:so yeah again, I think that's quite interesting because the first time I had a sort of major leadership position, I would say, I was quite young, I was 29, and I was working for an insurance company that was owned by its founder. Later on we were sold to a much larger corporate, but at the time it was owned by its founder and he called me to his office. I was there as HR I think it was called personnel manager at the time, but basically it was HR manager and there was quite a lot of things to do. It was really quite chaotic. I think at the time the turnover rate was something like 78%. It was really chaotic and so I put in a lot of processes, which actually glued up the whole organisation first of all, which wasn't really good, and then I started to realise, instead of processes, I needed to actually train people to be more effective in recruitment and more effective in onboarding and managing people, and that we would retain people through skilful management rather than me insisting on signing off every new recruit, which was was the gluing up that I was doing. And and one day he called me to his office and said that he decided to promote me to the board and I was 29 at the time and the board consisted of men in their 50s and so this was quite unusual. But he told me it was confidential and I came out of his office and I remember calling my mum actually and saying I think I think I might have been promoted and it's quite a big promotion, but I kind of because I wasn't allowed to talk to anyone about it, I was kind of started to think that I'd imagined it or something. And it went on for a couple of weeks where nothing was said in the organisation because there were some other moves that he was trying to make so that would be part of the story. And I remember just not really being sure whether I'd actually heard him correctly, but it turned out I had, because eventually it was announced and again, that was for me a really changing point in my career because then I was really on this board of directors.
Sara Burks:It was a PLC, we were going global, there was a lot going on and I was just very different to the other people on face value. I probably wasn't that different actually, but on face value very different. And, for example, we used to have our board meetings at Clevedon, which is very fabulous and the guys all went for game of golf and they used to kindly book me into the spa to have my nails done while they were off on this game of golf, and so I completely missed out on all of the key discussions that were going on while they were having the game of golf. A nd then we would come to the actual meeting part and they would say, oh, these are some of the things that we've been discussing and we've already made a few decisions. And I started to realise I needed to do something to interrupt that pattern, and so I started making decisions on my own in the spa and then announcing them in the meeting. Obviously weren't real decisions, but I was just trying to disrupt the pattern.
Sara Burks:And again, I think that for me was really significant, because it was a bit like the she leads people in the wrong direction comment, and that I had to be quite disruptive in order to make my mark in that group of people who are all really great people. There was no difficulty in their relationships, but they just hadn't thought through the impact of them having those side conversations. And so I'm really of a very young age, I mean, when I think of it now, I was very naïve and you know, you know what I was doing at the age of 29. To be honest with you, I found myself in quite a pivotal position, quite influential. So that was an interesting time in my career, I think.
Sara Burks:But then, just continuing on that trajectory, after a couple of years we were bought out by a large American company and everything changed and I didn't really enjoy working in that large corporate environment and that's what caused me then to come out of the corporate world and start my own business, and so that for me that was a good thing, that was the best thing that could have happened. But there was a couple of bumpy years where I just realised corporate life wasn't really for me on that grand scale, if you like, where you're just a really a cog in the machine and
Nick MacKenzie:so I'm thinking, is disruption a key part of you founding, then Is that what drives you when you describe yourself as a founder and you founded Adaptis.
Nick MacKenzie:Is disruption part of your mindset?
Sara Burks:It might be, but if it is, it's not thought through like that. I think I like to have an impact. That's probably what drives that and sometimes to have an impact you have to be prepared to be disruptive, I think, and to see things differently, but also be prepared to be out there on your own as the only person seeing things differently at the beginning and by the I'm sure I've seen things differently and got it horribly wrong on a number of occasions. It's not like I'm always right or something, but I think I want to make an impact and I think that then leads to seeing things differently and wanting to follow through on that in some way or another.
Nick MacKenzie:Take the theme or so perspective for seeing things differently. Is there a time you can think about where listening to someone else's story changed your perspective as a leader and what did you take away from that?
Sara Burks:That must have happened so many times. Let me see if I can think of an example. I'd say it happens daily. I'm not going to come to an example yet, but I'll just give an example of why I said what I just said then. Because so every day I run leadership workshops of one type or another and I just think I'm just so fortunate because every day I'm talking to you know, between 10 and 20 leaders about leadership in some form or another and hearing their different perspectives and learning um from people, and quite often we might be presenting a well-known model of how to do something and someone will actually will actually.
Sara Burks:That leads me to a good example. Good, I thought I would come to one eventually, because I remember once we were sharing the "radical candor" model, like in Scott, and I was doing it with a group of an international group of leaders and one of the guys who was based in Kuala Lumpur and just said to me this culturally just does not work here at all, like this is not how we, how we talk to people, and during that conversation we re-saw that whole model from an Asian perspective, through a different cultural lens, and again, I remember being really struck by that because so much of leadership thinking comes from Harvard Business School or the Center for Creative Leadership, which are US organisations, or comes from, you know, for example, the coaching model coming from a UK perspective, and so it was it's.
Sara Burks:I really love that challenge of cultural difference and thinking about how things land culturally, so that's an example where it really made me rethink some of the basic understandings I had of leadership from a purely, let's say, western type perspective. That's really interesting. That's happened so often, so often that someone will will give a new perspective, taken from their, through their cultural lens, which I find really useful thank, thank you.
Nick MacKenzie:I wanted to. Could you talk to me about happiness? I saw a reference a while ago, in one of your linkedin feeds actually, where you referenced a book by Paul Dolan, happiness by Design. I've not read it, I love the title. Can you talk to me a bit about happiness and that relevance for that for you in leadership?
Sara Burks:Yeah, so essentially that book comes up with an equation which is that happiness is based on purpose and pleasure and that if we have purpose then we can endure quite difficult times. It gives us resilience, whereas pleasure is often a fleeting thing, it's quite ephemeral and it doesn't last very long. Or if you just had a hedonistic lifestyle, for example, with no real purpose, how that could doesn't really take you anywhere. And for me, again, with leadership, that's so important that if there's a clear purpose to what you're trying to achieve as a leader, then people can follow. And even if things get really difficult, if the purpose still makes sense to people, they'll stay on that track.
Sara Burks:And in his book he gives the example of parent parenthood. I'm not a parent myself, but I've seen this where often being a parent is really difficult, really challenging. You know the messiness of having small children to the challenges of teenagers and even children into their. You know 30s and 40s, the worry and anxiety that parents often have about their children, for example. But he uses that as an example of that's such a clear purpose.
Sara Burks:When you're a parent, you really understand that that's your purpose and therefore the displeasure or the difficulties or challenges of being a parent are endurable because the purpose is so clear. And I think in leadership that's really important and if you look at sort of our great historical leaders, like Gandhi for example, that he led people into quite difficult situations but they endured because they had a strong sense of purpose. And so I think one of one of the programs I run for one of our clients is called the purposeful leader, and I think it's that makes a lot of sense. What all leadership is about is having that sort of clear sense of purpose
Nick MacKenzie:yeah, I think.
Nick MacKenzie:I think it's really interesting in the in a time when you know, as employers, you want to look after your staff's well-being. But that, that whole point, because what you're saying reminded me of I think victor frankel has has commented quite a bit on this where he's like what humans need is not attention to state, but rather the striving and struggling for some worthy goal, which sounds to me similar. So it was like attention to state is not the path to happiness for humans, and seeking out those worthy goals, having a bit of attention to them, actually is an inherently healthy thing
Sara Burks:yeah, definitely.
Sara Burks:And also it fits with , the notion of ikigai, which I hope I'm not mispronouncing the Japanese idea of living a worthwhile or useful life. It's the same sort of thing. Having a sense of meaning in what you're doing just makes a huge difference, and you see that in all different sectors. And then, amusingly, one of my friends had a sort of tech start-up which he sold for millions and very successfully, and he then embarked on a hedonistic lifestyle and went all over the world just flying on private jets and hiring yachts at great expense and genuinely enjoying himself. But it only lasted a few months before he just just said this really actually quite boring um, and although I thought to myself I'll give that a try for a while, but anyway he's found it quite boring quite quickly. And then started.
Sara Burks:He's now started a new business which is um having less success. It is successful. I mean less that fast track success he'd had the first time around. He's now having to plough into, I would say, this new organisation. But he looks so much happier for it in general terms maybe not on a moment-by-moment happiness basis, but overall he looks more satisfied. Maybe I should say rather than happy.
Nick MacKenzie:I like the word fulfilled when it comes to these sorts of discussions of yeah, because fulfilled. You can have a really tough week but you feel like you've bought a worthy, a worthy battle that week.
Nick MacKenzie:But it could have been tough, but you're still leaving fulfilled
Sara Burks:yeah, that's a really good word, or content is what I think is a good, good way to describe that
Nick MacKenzie:so you've been I think you said Adaptis been going for about 22 years loads of training with individuals and teams and groups.
Nick MacKenzie:If I said to you, an effective leader is a storyteller does does that resonate?
Sara Burks:yeah, definitely because, for me, that comes back to this whole idea of purpose, because if you can't describe the purpose or engage people with the purpose, um, then it doesn't. It doesn't matter if there's a purpose or not, because people don't really get it. They people need to get it, don't they? And, um, I always think of the quote from maya angelou, which is that people forget what you said, they forget what you did, but they never forget how you made them feel, and storytelling is a feelings thing, and so if you can engage people with a story that really resonates with them, they're much more likely to get on board with something that you're asking people to do, um, in a hopefully in an ethical way. I don't put you about sort of being manipulative, but being able to describe through examples and anecdotes what it is you're trying to say, I think is really important is there a story that you often use and draw on to use with either the people you're training or your team to inspire or motivate them?
Sara Burks:I've got a lot of stories that I draw on to bring things to life, but I suppose have I got a favourite story or something that I use quite often? Probably one of them would be when I described a time when I had a boss in one of my corporate roles who was quite a taskmaster, quite intense as a leader, and he decided that we were to go for this team set, a team thing, where we went to Wales and we had to walk up some hike up some hills, and that is not an activity I enjoy at all. I would never do hiking by choice, it's not my thing. And so we arrived first thing in the morning at the bottom of this hill that we were going to check up and there was three, um, stopping points, kind of camps if you like. They weren't really camps, but stopping points.
Sara Burks:On this journey to the top of this hill it was miserable, it was cold, we was wearing uncomfortable outfits because that would be my first choice of outfits, the hiking outfit, but off we went up this hill and we were, we were, you know, making our way up the hill. It was hard, really hard work, and we got to the first base camp, or whatever it was called the first stopping point. And just as we got to that stopping point it stopped raining and the mist was starting to rise and the sun was coming up, because it's quite early in the morning. And just at the point we were about to turn around and look at the view and look at where we come from, he said right next next camp, and off we went and started walking again. We never got any chance during that day to look back at how far we'd come or to you know, admire our hard work, if you like, before we went on to the next thing.
Sara Burks:And it always makes me think of how often in corporate life there's a meeting to say congratulations everyone, we've had the best year of our. You know our lives, you know we've hit all of our numbers, really worked hard to make that happen. It was very tough but we've done it. And you were like, oh yeah, that's fantastic. And then just before you finish going, ah, the positive, but next year is going to be even tougher.
Sara Burks:Just think, ah, I was just about to enjoy the celebration of how far we've come, to really look at the view before we were off again to the next base camp, which was even harder, and I just think that's a good lesson for all of us as leaders, to make sure we give people time to look at the view and see how far they've come. And that's one of my probably favourite stories to illustrate that point that we do need to look back and have a chance to think about what we've achieved before we move on to the next thing, if we possibly can. It's not always possible, I appreciate, but if we possibly can, I think there's a moment of pause that can be really helpful.
Nick MacKenzie:What do you think about gratitude as well? Often people don't say thank you much or take the time out as a team to recognise what each has done to support the other.
Sara Burks:Absolutely.
Sara Burks:I think that's really, really important, just valuing the different contributions people make.
Sara Burks:That may not always be that obvious, because sometimes the people who are less seen in organisations are just the reliable day-to-day people who come every day, do their work and can be relied upon to do that, but they don't really make great waves and they're often the people who are least valued in the organisation. When you do pause and have a really thoughtful moment about how did we get here or how did we achieve what we've achieved, then those people can be better valued because everyone gives it a little bit more thought than the more obvious contributors who are perhaps louder or did something new or, you know, contributed in a different way. They're a bit, their value is sometimes a bit easier to see. But they wouldn't be able to do any of that if they didn't have colleagues that were there to just be reliable and steadfast and trustworthy, dependable if you like, and they often I don't think it's much value. But the other thing that I'm often concerned about is leaders being properly valued for what they're doing.
Sara Burks:So in a lot of our leadership programs we talk about creating psychological safety in in teams, so that being the most important factor in a high performing team is that people feel safe in that team, they feel respected and valued by their colleagues.
Sara Burks:For, for example, and often nowadays I find that leaders are not very psychologically safe and they may be valued, but often the way that leaders are valued can be quite superficial and sort of, and it's sort of done by sort of roads that you know we should all say to our leader thank you so much for you know my pay rise or something like that.
Sara Burks:I don't know, I'm not saying this very well maybe, but I think that quite often nowadays leaders don't feel very psychologically safe. There's a lot of sense of leadership being really under the spotlight and being a good leader is really important. Leadership being really under the spotlight and that being a good leader is really important, and quite a lot of calling out of leadership behaviors that people don't think are appropriate, which is that's not a bad thing. But if, if you're, if you're constantly aware of being sort of observed as a leader, that can use up quite a lot of nervous energy because you don't feel safe. You think, if I say the wrong thing at the wrong time, that I'm going to be blamed somehow for that, and I think that can be difficult for leaders.
Nick MacKenzie:So what would your best advice be to a leader on what they can do to to move the dial on that and create greater psychological safety for themselves?
Sara Burks:I think that's where um, for example, one-to-one coaching, can be really helpful for a leader to have a safe space where they can really talk about what's on their minds, and often just talk about what, what is the right thing to say in certain circumstances, and why can't I say x or y. This sort of feeds into cancel culture to some extent, the sort of fear that if I say the wrong thing, I'll you know, my career could literally come to an end just by a misplaced sentence or two, and and having a safe space to talk about those kind of things I think is really important. So I find, especially at the most senior levels, that CEOs, for example, or senior leaders need to find their safe spaces, and it could be in one-to-one coaching or it could be in a colleague team where there's a high level of psychological safety, where they can share their challenges, share their fears and and do that without fear of judgment or blaming in some kind of way, and I think that can be really helpful so change, changing subject a bit then.
Nick MacKenzie:What are the other challenges? I think that I don't know. It feels to me certainly it gets, seems to get tougher as the months passes. Effective communication in the current world, um, sometimes it can feel like it's it's it's broadcasting rather than really effective communication, because there's so much that comes out to all of us in terms of emails, teams, whatever other things that you're using. What have you learned about leaders being effective communicators, whether it's to staff, to stakeholders, to customers? What sorts of things have you learned and seen that can be quite useful to deploy?
Sara Burks:You're so right. I think sometimes leaders feel that they need to be right, but that also feeds back into this sense of psychological safety that I can't get things wrong, I can't make a mistake. And, um, I think if a leader goes into a situation with a mindset of saying, I think I know what we should be doing here, but I'm open to discussion, or I'm open to other people's views and opinions, recognising that in the end, probably you have the responsibility to take the final decision, I think that can really lead to proper dialogue and communication, rather than debate where you're just going into a situation just saying this is how it is, um, that, I think that makes quite a big difference thank you.
Nick MacKenzie:So I was wondering um, things don't always go to plan, so when things get tough, they're not going to plan for you. What sort of strategies do you use to uh, give you the energy you need?
Sara Burks:oh gosh, that's a really good question. What would I?
Sara Burks:do I probably, again, would have some close friends and confidence, um, either in a personal or or a business situation that I would turn to and run things by and ask their inputs and thoughts. And I think that's what I normally do if things are getting a little bit challenging. And I'm lucky probably quite fortunate because a lot of my friends are in psychology in one way or another, so they're really good listeners, like proper professional listeners, which can be really helpful. But one friend who's a psychotherapist, for example, and we probably would have a nice walk on Wimbledon Common or something, and she's just a really really good listener, something. She's just a really really good listener and so as you're walking and talking, you start figuring things out in your own mind and she just is excellent at letting you do that, and so I really value, for example, her friendship, but also, in those difficult situations, the space that she gives for thinking so on thinking then what, how much time do you find you get to make to think?
Sara Burks:This is such a big issue because actually at the beginning of this year I broke my ankle and it was almost going back into lockdown again. I was sort of stuck at home and I could do. I could do virtual work, of course, but I had to change quite a few things because a lot of our work now is back in person and I couldn't get to do those things. So I had some time on my hands and it turned out to be really, really useful because I needed to have a really big rethink of the next few years and what, what my plans are for the next few years, and it's sort of enforced some time to do that. Then it made me realise that I needed to be enforced to do that, and so even that in itself was really useful to say to what extent do you, am I, creating enough time and space for that kind of thinking?
Sara Burks:I do quite a lot of traveling and so, um, plane travel is a great time for thinking. I find you know, again, I'm kind of enforced to do it, and so that tells you a lot about me that I need to be to put myself in situations where I have to spend time thinking. Um, but I also read a really good book by Derek Draper. I think it's called Creating Space and it's um. It's all about exactly that how do we create space for?
Sara Burks:the important things in our lives and that includes thinking time and I found that really useful to really think about. How do I do that? Because I'm quite a doer so I'm easily distracted into doing stuff and sort of thinking properly.
Nick MacKenzie:And do you have any favourite or go-to type?
Sara Burks:questions when you're doing any thinking that you find you've used a few times. Because I'm quite an instinctive person, I quite like to ask myself why are you thinking that? Because it's coming from a kind of spontaneous or instinctive point of view. So to really trace back, how have I come to that thought? Where does that come from? What's the path that's led to that thought? I don't find that quite useful. So the some sort of question why are you thinking that? What's the root of that thought? I find quite a useful self sort of coaching type question.
Nick MacKenzie:Sounds interesting. So we haven't got much time left, Sara, so a few few final questions for you. I was you obviously work with a wide range of people in your team, and that you have as well. I was wondering what quality do you see in young people you wish you had more of?
Sara Burks:oh gosh, that's so interesting. One of the things I think is the sense of optimism about the future, but in a kind of a sort of unknowing optimism, if you see what I mean, because you know, when you you're younger, you don't know what's coming up. And I could, I can't, I couldn't remember not really thinking about what was coming up, and I quite like that idea. I found that as I've got older, I'm sort of thinking about the implications and consequences of things much more than I used to when I was younger, much more than I see younger people doing, and so I'd quite like to have that quality of thinking and doing things without so much concern with the consequences of that or the outcomes of that. I don't know if that would be a good thing or not, but I'd quite like to have that sort of, as I say, thinking.
Sara Burks:Oh, hang on a second, let me add some caution to what I'm thinking, because I can think through what could happen if I do x or y. Maybe I should just do x or y. And it reminds me of when I decided to move to Italy a few years ago, and at the time people said to me well, do you speak Italian? I said no, I don't, but I'll have to learn when I get there. And people said well, what if it doesn't work out? And I remember thinking I'll just come back again, and that's the kind of thinking that I don't think I have any longer and I wish I wish I did. That's a nice way to approach. It gets you to do things that perhaps you wouldn't do if you overly think through the consequences.
Nick MacKenzie:And so sticking generally with that, that theme of what would be the best advice you would give yourself as a younger Sara, when, perhaps before you had that first senior leadership, when you said at 29, what have you learned along the way that you think would be If you could boil it into one piece of sage advice to yourself? What have you learned along the way that you think would be if you could boil it into one piece of sage advice to yourself? What would you choose?
Sara Burks:I think I always suffered from imposter syndrome, like and that goes right back to that time when, you know, I spent a few weeks thinking I must have misheard the guy also just thinking I just what often I used to tell that story and.
Sara Burks:I was saying, like you know, I was promoted to quite a senior role at quite a young age and I used to explain it by saying it's just the right place, right time. The guy you know, the guy leading the business, just you know wanted someone who could get the job done. And I could do that and really sort of downplay what and there's also some truth in all of those statements, by the way there was right place, right time. I think I wish I had spent less time thinking I wasn't up to the job and actually accepting that if someone's given me this job, they at least must believe that I'm up to the job, because I spent quite a lot of time working really hard just to be sure that I was worthy of something, and I wish I hadn't felt the need to do that, because that could be literally really quite hard work. It uses a lot of energy. You're wondering if you're capable or not instead of just getting on with it.
Nick MacKenzie:So final question then what would you say brings you, I don't know, let's say, 80% of your joy as a leader?
Sara Burks:Seeing other people develop. It's really important to me and I can see people go on to bigger and better things. And then I see people um, it's quite a few times it's happened to me that I've hired people who have never been a trainer let's call it that never run training programs and then they start doing it and literally the joy they get from it, they suddenly realise, wow, this is really fun, like I'm really getting a lot out of this and that's just a wonderful conversation to have, where someone's realised they've found their feet in a profession that's going to really work for them.
Sara Burks:I think that gives me a lot of joy, and you know in the same way when you're running a workshop, if someone has a bit of an epiphany and says I've just suddenly realised how to deal with a certain situation, and then if you're lucky enough that you see them again and they come back to you and say this is what happened, I find that really, really rewarding and joyful, because you see the person themselves feeling joyful and you get some sort of benefit from that yourself. I think.
Nick MacKenzie:Sounds infectious.
Sara Burks:Yes, exactly it is. It's good for everyone. It's a good all-round feeling.
Nick MacKenzie:Well, I'm afraid we've got no more time today, Sara, but thank you so much for joining me. I appreciate you sharing your reflections today, and I've certainly had plenty of food for thought, and I hope our listeners have as well.
Sara Burks:Thank you. It's a bit strange to talk about yourself for such a long time, but I enjoyed it.
