Leading Professionals

S4 EP6 - Leading Complex Change: Breaking Through Practical Barriers and Political Resistance

Mon, 01 Dec 2025 05:00:00 GMT

Guest: Dame Emily Lawson, formerly COO, NHS England, and Head of Number 10's Delivery Unit

Emily has considerable experience of leading change in complex professional organisations, including leading the initial rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine programme across the UK.

Laura asks: How do you manage to not be overwhelmed by complexity or discouraged by failure? How do you bring the right team together and deal with covert resistance?

Website: https://www.lauraempson.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LeadingProfessionals

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/professor-laura-empson-69820773/

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S4 EP5 - Becoming "Professional": How to Look, Sound, Act and Feel like a Professional

Mon, 17 Nov 2025 05:00:00 GMT

Guest: Paul Lewis, Firmwide Managing Partner of Linklaters

If you do not fit the conventional image of an elite professional, how do you persuade others that you are, and how do you learn to feel like one?

Paul and Laura discuss his own very personal experiences of “becoming professional”. What can be done to help people from non-professional backgrounds to thrive within elite professional organisations?

Website: https://www.lauraempson.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LeadingProfessionals

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/professor-laura-empson-69820773/

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S4 EP4 - Considering the Future: How AI and Private Equity Will Change Professionals' Work

Mon, 03 Nov 2025 05:00:00 GMT

Guest: Michael Izza CBE, CEO (former) of ICAEW

For almost 20 years, Michael led the ICAEW, with more than 200,000 members in almost 150 countries.

So he has a distinctively long-term and global perspective on the accounting profession.

Focusing on the interrelated changes of Gen AI and PE ownership, Laura and Michael explore: What is already happening and what changes lie ahead?

Website: https://www.lauraempson.com

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LeadingProfessionals

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/professor-laura-empson-69820773/

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S4 EP3 - Electing Leaders: How to Choose Your Leaders and How To Get Elected

Mon, 20 Oct 2025 04:00:00 GMT

Guest: Michael Ensser, Chair of Egon Zehnder

Laura asks Michael: Why does a world leading firm of leadership consultants choose to elect their senior leaders, and how do their elections actually work?

They discuss what really goes on behind the scenes of professional service firms’ carefully stage managed leadership elections.

Website: https://www.lauraempson.com

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LeadingProfessionals

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/professor-laura-empson-69820773/

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S4 EP2 - Doing the Right Thing: How to Make Ethically Tough Decisions

Mon, 06 Oct 2025 04:00:00 GMT

Guest: Georgia Dawson, Senior Partner of Freshfields

If you are a lawyer you may be able to guess why Laura asks Georgia to explore the challenging theme of professional ethics with her.

In a complex commercial, social, and political environment, how do you balance the competing interests of multiple stakeholders?

How do you decide, what is the 'right' thing? And then, how do you make sure you do it?

Website: https://www.lauraempson.com/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LeadingProfessionals

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/professor-laura-empson-69820773/

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S4 EP1 - Leading in Uncertain Times: How to Respond to Geopolitical Change and AI Disruption

Mon, 22 Sep 2025 04:00:00 GMT

Guest: Fabien Curto Millet, Chief Economist of Google.

Fabien joins Laura to discuss how he and his team of economists anticipate, analyse, and understand the scale of change with which Google must contend.

How does he lead his team of professionals, and manage himself, during these uncertain times? And what does he remember from when Laura taught him Strategy at Oxford 25 years ago?

Website: https://www.lauraempson.com

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LeadingProfessionals

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/professor-laura-empson-69820773/

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S4 EP0 Welcome to Leading Professionals

Mon, 15 Sep 2025 04:00:00 GMT

Professor Laura Empson introduces key topics and guests from the upcoming series.

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David Bickford: Spies as professionals

Mon, 11 Dec 2023 05:00:43 GMT

What are the parallels between the worlds of espionage and professional services? Laura and Tony talk to David Bickford, previously General Counsel to MI5 and MI6, about his role as the agencies’ Legal Director and Under Secretary of State. They explore how to build trust when professionals are working remotely, how to collaborate when knowledge is shared on a need-to-know basis, and how to stop powerful professionals from going rogue.

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Katherine White: Leading discretely

Mon, 27 Nov 2023 05:00:35 GMT

Laura and Tony speak to Katherine White, the first Chief Talent Officer of global executive search firm, Spencer Stuart. They explore the challenges of being a senior leader when you are not a fee-earner, and of leading the so-called talent when the fee-earners themselves do not see you as the talent. Katherine explains how she built trust and influence, and how she learnt to add value quickly while working slowly and discretely to bring about change.

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Gianpiero Petriglieri: Coming out of the psychological closet

Mon, 13 Nov 2023 05:00:59 GMT

Gianpiero Petriglieri, Associate Professor at INSEAD, is ranked as one of the top 50 management thinkers in the world. Laura and Tony talk to him about the difficult emotions that often stay hidden and suppressed in organisations and individuals, and how leaders of professional organisations can become more effective when they engage more directly with these emotions.

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June Sarpong: Leading as an outsider

Mon, 30 Oct 2023 05:00:57 GMT

Laura and Tony are joined by June Sarpong OBE, the BBC’s first Global Director of Creative Diversity. They explore how to bring about disruptive change in a large, complex and high-profile professional organisation, and how to get things done quickly in an environment when decisions are taken slowly. June explains how she managed to do all this as an outsider with no previous leadership experience, but a great deal of broadcast experience.

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Chris Saul: Subtle power

Mon, 16 Oct 2023 04:00:43 GMT

Chris Saul is the former Senior Partner of the UK’s most prestigious law firm, Slaughter and May. Laura and Tony explore how leaders use subtle power to build consensus among partners in a professional organisation. They discover some of the secrets of how Slaughter and May has evolved successfully over more than a century, and managed to retain its powerful position at the heart of the UK’s economy.

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Steve Varley: Profiting from sustainability

Mon, 02 Oct 2023 04:00:38 GMT

Laura and Tony speak to Steve Varley, EY’s first Global Vice Chair for Sustainability. They find out how he was inspired by Greta Thunberg to try to build a bridge between environmentalism and capitalism, and the skills he used to make this happen. He explains how he created this role in EY to place sustainability at the heart of the firm’s business, and how he mobilised both colleagues and clients to build a significant sustainability practice.

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Welcome Back

Thu, 28 Sep 2023 04:00:01 GMT

Welcome back to Leading Professional People, the podcast that explores the most crucial leadership questions currently facing professional organisations.

For this third series, Professor Laura Empson, who has dedicated almost 30 years to researching professionals and professional service firms, will be joined by a new co-host, Tony Hall, Lord Hall of Birkenhead, the former Director General of the BBC.

Laura and Tony’s guests include a fascinating selection of senior leaders from professional organisations, including EY, Slaughter & May, Spencer Stuart, INSEAD, the BBC, and MI6.

Join them to explore the challenges, confusions, frustrations, and elations that make professional organisations so difficult to lead and so fascinating to understand.

Follow this podcast so you never miss an episode.

Find out more at lauraempson.com

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Leadership in the spotlight

Mon, 26 Jul 2021 04:00:00 GMT

Empson & Morley speak to Tony Hall, Lord Hall, about his time as Director General of the BBC, and his many other high-profile roles. They examine what it is like to lead complex organizations with multiple groups of stakeholders under intense public scrutiny.

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Leadership value chain

Mon, 12 Jul 2021 04:00:00 GMT

How do you build better leaders in a professional service firm? Empson & Morley speak to Russ Hagey, Worldwide Chief Talent Officer of Bain. They explore Bain’s self-reinforcing leadership development system, and the way “insurgency” is both encouraged and controlled to strengthen the system.

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Ethics and leadership

Mon, 28 Jun 2021 04:00:00 GMT

Why do professionals do bad things? Empson & Morley speak to Professor Brooke Harrington of Dartmouth College, in the USA. They explore the factors which drive some professionals to behave unethically, and the organizational and societal factors which encourage it.

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Extreme collegiality

Mon, 14 Jun 2021 04:00:00 GMT

What is collegiality and how does it work in practice? Empson & Morley speak to Jill Ader, Chair of executive search and leadership advisory firm Egon Zehnder. They examine how to create an environment of mutual support, cultural consistency, and equality among peers.

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Leadership duets

Mon, 31 May 2021 04:00:00 GMT

Can dual leadership be effective and how does it work in practice? Empson & Morley analyse these questions with the help of Barry Devereaux and Catherine Deane, Managing Partner and Chairof leading Irish law firm, McCann Fitzgerald, who have recently introduced a dual leadership structure.

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Post-pandemic Professionalism

Mon, 17 May 2021 04:00:00 GMT

How can leaders help their professionals prepare for the challenges and opportunities of post-pandemic professional work? Empson & Morley explore this theme with Nick Owen, Chair of Deloitte UK. They consider how hybrid working is calling into question some well-established “truths” about the nature of professionalism.

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Collaboration in a Cold Climate

Mon, 22 Mar 2021 05:00:00 GMT

How do you create and sustain collaboration when you no longer meet each other face to face? Empson & Morley discuss this with Kirsten Edwards-Warren, Executive Vice President EMEA for Compass Lexecon. They examine the distinctive culture, systems, and structures the firm has developed to encourage collaboration and how it continued to thrive during the pandemic.

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Global versus Local

Mon, 08 Mar 2021 05:00:00 GMT

In a global professional organisation, how do you achieve alignment across national offices? Empson outlines one powerful method – social control – and Morley explores his experience of leading partners through the process of global integration. They talk to Philip Davidson, currently Global COO of KPMG about exercising power while walking the global/local tightrope.

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Partnership versus Corporate

Mon, 22 Feb 2021 05:00:00 GMT

Empson explains how the culture of partnership is created and sustained while Morley highlights the challenges of growth and scale in this context. To examine the differences and similarities between leadership in partnerships and corporations, they talk to Sir Ian Davis, former Global Managing Partner of McKinsey and now Chairman of Rolls-Royce plc.

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Ambition versus Reluctance

Mon, 08 Feb 2021 05:00:00 GMT

Professional people can be notoriously reluctant to see themselves as leaders. Empson & Morley explore what can be done to support professionals making the transition from full-time fee earner to leader. They examine the myth of “authenticity” with Professor Herminia Ibarra, of London Business School, globally renowned expert in leadership identity and career transitions.

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Leadership in crisis

Mon, 25 Jan 2021 05:00:00 GMT

Empson outlines how a crisis changes the balance of power in professional organisations, but only temporarily. Morley explains the importance of adapting your leadership style as a crisis ebbs and flows. They interview Wim Dejonghe, Global Senior Partner of global law firm Allen and Overy, to find out how he has dealt with the Covid crisis.

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Paradoxes of Leadership

Mon, 11 Jan 2021 05:00:00 GMT

Empson gets a call at midnight from a client asking for advice as a potential leadership coup gathers momentum. Morley & Empson discuss the paradoxes of leading professional people, including the paradox of autonomy and control. When your “followers” don’t like being told what to do, how do you get them to do anything?

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Welcome to Leading Professional People

Thu, 17 Dec 2020 00:00:00 GMT

Professor Laura Empson and David Morley introduce their new podcast series ‘Leading Professional People’.

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