Last night, Trinity’s Student Management Fund (SMF) hosted its sixth annual Leadership Perspectives event in the Arts Block. The event brought together a series of speakers from differing leadership roles to discuss their experiences and give advice to the audience on how to ensure success in “a world of opportunities”.
The panel included Dame Vivian Hunt, the head of management consultancy McKinsey’s UK and Irish division, former Irish rugby player Jamie Heaslip, Special Adviser to the Bush Administration and author and co-founder of H Robotics Dr Pippa Malmgren, as well as Caroline Keeling, the CEO and Managing Director of horticultural business Keelings. Newstalk Business Editor Vincent Wall moderated the proceedings.
Dame Vivian Hunt began the proceedings by discussing the economic merits of diversity within business. Under her leadership, McKinsey published a series of reports that clearly show the positive impact of gender, ethnic and cultural diversity on economic growth in both emerging and developing markets. These reports have now become a vital resource in her field and have led to collaborations with the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times. She attributes this success to her willingness to be “bold” and encouraged the audience to do the same, particularly in the first year in a leadership role, which she described as a “gift”.
Following Hunt’s speech, Caroline Keeling took to the podium to enlighten the audience on the importance of adaptability and perseverance when taking on a leading role. She recounted her experience with her family’s fruit-growing company, Keelings, in which the doubling of their output of berries had been followed almost immediately by the 2008 recession. The company’s ability to adapt into a brand and its decision to go directly into sales allowed them to both survive and thrive. Currently, Keelings is responsible for half of the 300 million Irish strawberries that are grown annually. Hunt suggested that the fact that they were at one point “stuck with too many berries”, is partly responsible for Ireland’s position as the highest consumption of berries in the world.
Next, Malmgren sought to encourage the audience to be open to new opportunities and to “just say yes” to opportunities that are offered, even if their benefit may not initially be obvious. She reflected on the variation present in her own resume and how skills she once deemed to be almost useless had benefited her in unusual ways. She gave the example of how her college degree in military history had informed her decision to co-found H Robotics. Finally, she stressed the importance of passion, stating that “if you do what you really enjoy, excellence [and] competence follows preference”.
Malmgren’s involvement with both the Reagan and Bush Administrations ensured that during the questions the audience were keen to hear her take on the current US political climate. She suggested that Trump would not run for president again because “he thought he was going to be king, and instead discovered he is a constitutional president, which is not nearly as much fun”. She also claimed that he was more likely to focus his attention on a “global communications channel”, which would ultimately give him “a bigger platform” than the presidency could give him to spread his desired messages.
The last speaker of the evening, Jamie Heaslip used his own experiences with failed leadership to encourage the audience to use any setbacks as a chance to pursue personal growth. He recounted how he was replaced as the captain of the Irish rugby team after a year in the role and how he had to reassess his position, abandoning his selfish rhetoric and concentrating on adding the greatest value to the team possible. He claimed it was an invaluable experience which gave him the “opportunity to grow and learn”.
