David McClelland (01:19.681)
Hello and welcome to episode three of CMXtra, the capital markets exchange podcast. I'm David McClelland and in this mini series of podcasts ahead of the inaugural in -person capital markets exchange event in London on June 27th, 2024, we're taking a closer look at some of the topics that matter most to capital markets and finance hive communities. Topics such as how artificial intelligence can give...

Traders the Edge on the trading desk. That was episode one. And gearing up for T plus one. That was what we discussed last time out. Find those wherever you find your podcasts. Today, though, we're asking how you can build a winning trading desk. How skills, culture and leadership all interplay to create an effective team. Now, as the legendary Peter Drucker once wrote,

Culture eats strategy for breakfast, which means to me anyway that no matter what course your senior leadership team may try to navigate your business, if you don't have the crew on board operating effectively as a team working with and for one another, then the chances of success are, well, maybe slim. But what exactly is culture?

How do you balance it with finding the skills necessary to do the job? Where does diversity, equity and inclusion fit in? And what strategies can leaders employ to get to or to fine tune the balance and to create and sustain a high performing team? Well, joining us today, we have a skilled and diverse team of leaders from across the industry. We have head of global foreign exchange trading at Fidelity International, Nigel Todd. Hello, Nigel.

Nigell Todd (03:04.752)
Hi David, pleased to be here.

David McClelland (03:07.233)
We also have Chief Operating Officer for Investment Management at Jupiter Asset Management, Ali Hollingshead. Hello, Ali.

Alison Hollingshead (03:15.183)
Hi there

David McClelland (03:16.833)
Strategic Advisor and Board Director in Capital Markets and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Champion Rosanna Bruni. Hi Rosanna.

Rosanna Bruni (03:26.197)
Hi David.

David McClelland (03:27.969)
And we also have Global Head of Learning and Organisational Development at TPICAP and LiquidNet University, Jeff Schwartzman. Hello, Jeff.

Jeff Schwartzman (03:37.072)
I David excited to be here.

David McClelland (03:38.945)
I'm excited you're here as well. I'm excited everyone's here. Thank you so much for joining us today. Let's dive straight in. Nigel, I'll come to you. Tell me, what is it that makes a high performing team for you? What are the traits in there?

Nigell Todd (03:53.902)
Thanks, David. I believe that, you know, just clear trust is paramount. Building upon smart goals that everyone is working towards and you're able to sell that vision to your team to work towards. I guess a combination of hard skills and soft skills.

These days it's not what you do, it's how you do it. Building a brand of your team that is credible, that people can rely upon, I think it is important. And also, I guess, being seen as a partner in the business that can help people want to go to work with, I think is vital. And I guess being able to give and receive feedback, I think taking on feedback is quite key.

you to learn and develop and being resilient, you know, celebrating successes but also picking yourself up to carry on and taking the opportunity to learn and try again. I think what I live by mostly is just taking accountability and owning the outcome is super important and I think that demonstrates the ability to learn and finding solutions and being a partner is what I mentioned before.

David McClelland (05:15.649)
Yeah, lots of great things in there. Thank you, Nigel. Trust, having that singular vision, creating that essence of everyone being a stakeholder, a partner within the organization. I love all of those. Thank you very much, Indy, for kicking us off there. Ali, tell us a bit about your role at Jupyter and how you help to shape your teams to operate effectively.

Alison Hollingshead (05:40.556)
As you said, I'm the CEO of the investment management floor here. So I'm essentially responsible for everything that's kind of not investment itself. So I have the trading team, I have data science, controls and oversight, business management, transformation, technology, all of those things that make a floor run that isn't the actual picking of stocks itself. And so, you know, I echo a lot of things that Nigel said, right? I think the things that are really important for this sort of high performing team and a strong culture of purpose, autonomy, accountability, and psychological safety.

I think your people need to know why they're there, what they're trying to achieve, and they need to feel safe and supported in delivering it to the best of their ability and their own sort of unique skills.

David McClelland (06:23.329)
Again, that singular vision, helping everyone to understand what some places might call it their North Star or their mission or whatever, but having everyone know what direction at least they're facing and then trusting them that they will find their own way sometimes, just creating some guardrails within which they can operate with autonomy, to use another one of your words. Really important. Thank you very much. And I think we'll come back to the psychological safety point as well.

in just a moment. Thank you. Rosanna, what's your take on the human components that can help to create an effective team?

Rosanna Bruni (07:02.837)
Well, obviously a lot of what Nigel and Ali said I echo a hundred percent. So for me, a high performing team is a cohesive, collaborative, united team where each member contributes in his or her own technical skill and value so that we can all align with the company's goals. And that kind of also engages everyone.

in being part of a bigger goal. And the elements that are important to achieve this, I believe, is a respectful, to create an investment, sorry, a respectable environment where ideas, skills, progressive information is shared, valued, and are flexible. So each member continues to be a human being and not just part of an operating component.

a human being that is being heard and appreciated.

David McClelland (08:07.009)
Yeah, more than just a number. When I've worked in large organizations, the thing that really rankled me more than anything else was being referred to as a resource. And I felt so dehumanized as a result of being called that. And, you know, I understand that we need to abstract certain things, certain roles, certain, you know, just in the parlance of our doing our work, but understanding...

just how being known as a number or as a username or as a resource, how that can impact on one's self -esteem. I think that's very helpful. Thank you so much, Rosanna. Finally, Geoff, you are head of learning and organisational developments in various places. What further insights would you have given your role to build on what the others have said so far?

Jeff Schwartzman (08:54.032)
Also brilliantly, what I'd add to it is a few things. One, teams need to have complementary skill sets and appreciation for differences. And oftentimes people look at differences as something that's a negative. It's really not actually. You want to have an appreciation for those things. Different doesn't mean wrong, it just means different. And the organizations that can appreciate that to me perform at a much higher level in my opinion. The other thing would be the right kind of core values and behaviors as a team.

So one of the things all teams have to do, in my opinion, to define what those values and behaviors are gonna be, they all have to learn what they are, especially when someone joins the team. They have to find a way to embrace them, and if you don't embrace them, you won't live them, because the most important thing is to live those behaviors on a consistent basis that truly increases performance.

David McClelland (09:45.665)
Yeah, interesting. You talk about complementary skills there and different can be good and that almost plays back to what Rosanna was saying in terms of respect, enabling people not to feel the wrong kind of difference that whatever difference that they bring in, they're able to complement a team as a whole. Some really, really strong points. And you're right, I think we have pulled out lots of things to use as the foundation.

for this conversation. Thank you all. I think we'll move on to start talking about skills specifically. We'll kind of break apart some of this. And I think skills, ultimately skills are required in order to do one's job, in order to fulfil the role that we are all trying to do to help the company achieve its aims, whatever they may be. Maybe taking a step forward, Alison and then Nigel, in terms of the roles that are

common in today's trading teams. Maybe we can start from the kind of specific roles and then work back from that to look at the skills that might be required. What do you see in your teams, Alison?

Alison Hollingshead (10:57.604)
Sure, so obviously on the trading desk, we are split by asset class. So we have our equity traders, our fixed income traders. We've recently split out a treasury function as well. So we've kind of taken cash management and cash optimization as a separate role now. So we've got that role on our desk as well. We are trying to bring more use of kind of data and TCA. So we have absolutely been building out our TCA capability and we have an analyst who's starting to do...

a lot more focused work around kind of TCA and data and outcomes. And then obviously our head of trading who frankly tries to do all of the things from, you know, his relationships with tech providers, regulators, senior stakeholders and all of the traders on the desk. So these are probably kind of the key roles for us.

David McClelland (11:42.209)
Nigel, is that similar to where you are at Fidelity?

Nigell Todd (11:44.995)
very, very similar. And I think it's when we talk about hard skills and soft skills, the hard skills is what we know can be taught. But I guess it's that diverse pool of candidates that we attract. And knowing that necessarily mid -aim income from a college background and broadening that pool, I think it is quite key and something that we're looking at constantly as we evolve.

David McClelland (12:12.321)
Now, yeah, that's a pretty good point in terms of the pool of potential talent in other industries, technologies closest to where I'm from. This talent conversation is very much around the massive skills gap that people see when trying to recruit. There's just not enough talent to go around. And the other thing is this brain drain, particularly in some markets where talent might be chasing a pot of gold in another country, moving to the US, moving to a big tech firm or whatever it is.

I'm curious to know what sort of challenges you've found in recruiting the talent that your teams need to fulfill those roles. Nigel, maybe I'll come straight to you on this, given that that's an area you touched on.

Nigell Todd (12:52.45)
I think it's just looking at other talent pools and starting perhaps a little bit younger and building that pipeline. So if we recognize that diversity within our teams is something that we need to address, it's starting very young and looking at some specific areas of schools that probably may have not looked at, we may not looked at before or other, you know, women returners or returner programs back into

Rosanna Bruni (13:08.373)
Thank you.

Nigell Todd (13:22.433)
work for. So some of those are areas that we have looked at and we found some success throughout our organization.

David McClelland (13:31.665)
And, and Jeff, how easy is it to cross -train talent maybe from one discipline, even from a different industry to another, particularly when we're looking at maybe some quite specific skills that might be required in capital markets and adjacent teams?

Jeff Schwartzman (13:50.608)
Well, that's an interesting question because the ease of something depends on the person, it depends on what I say their mindset is, their attitude towards something, the can, the will, the want to do something. It doesn't matter their age, it doesn't matter their experience. If continuous improvement is part of their habits, their way of being, it's gonna be much easier than someone's like, no, I've always done it this way. Forget it, I can't do it this way.

So to me, it's really a mindset. It starts with your mindset. We talk about having the right mindset, developing the right skillset, and then adopting the right tool set to help you accelerate your career and the organization.

David McClelland (14:30.813)
Yeah. Allison.

Alison Hollingshead (14:32.831)
I think Jeff's got a really important point there about it being mindset, not age -led. I think one of the real challenges we've had is, you know, there isn't always a lot of turnover. You know, we're an industry that's quite cost constrained at the moment. There's not a lot of movement going on. And so while we might like to go out and find lots of kind of young diverse talent, the reality is we've got the people we've got and they want to evolve and upskill as well. And if you are bringing in this kind of young...

talent with coding skills and stuff, you have to be careful to not disenfranchise those who are kind of more established and more experienced. So I think one of the real things we've been thinking about and trying to challenge ourselves on is how we upskill our older, more established traders. I've got a guy who's coming up to his 30th anniversary here. He's still a massively valued member of the trading desk. His experience is unparalleled. So how do we give him the toolkit and the skills and the training that he needs to feel that he can keep evolving and moving forward and challenging the young guys?

David McClelland (15:25.889)
Yeah, that's something I feel really strongly about, particularly with the rate at which one's job roles are changing now with automation technologies, however you want to dress them up coming in. We're no longer in a job for life. And that means that more and more of society is going through a career change, maybe every decade or so. Yet some people find it very difficult to make that change into an adjacent career or into another career entirely because some recruiters are only looking for young talent. So that heartens me to hear how open...

your minds there are. But Rosanna, particularly when you are looking at maybe cross -training, maybe bringing people in from another part of the organisation, saying that you welcome those people is one thing, but actually helping those people to feel able, helping them to feel, well, you know what, I can do this, can be a challenge. And we see that play out in a number of ways with neurodiversity, but even with gender as well, and the different ways in which recruiters can and cannot kind of attract women.

A talent, for example.

Rosanna Bruni (16:29.077)
Yeah, I believe that, you know, when you're recruiting, you have to look at the transferable skills. Where you can, technical skills are very important, obviously, in a trading desk, that's your bread and butter. But if you can bring in someone who has the capacity to learn, the willingness to learn, again, going back to the open mind that Jeff mentioned, that person can do anything they want.

So I think it's that willingness, the open -minded, the critical thinker who comes in and doesn't just do what is in the box, what is required, but also have that decision -making, the adaptability. I think that's the most important adaptability, where they can come in, get along with the team, which is number one, and they all work together to help each other. But if...

You can't help someone who's closed minded and does not want to be helped. So that open minded is very important. And I think that the flexibility also of that person coming in and being able to say, well, I'm what I used to be doing. I can't do that anymore. But there's another way of doing it and then bring those skills and that knowledge and that perspective also.

to the new team, to the team, it'll be very beneficial for everyone actually involved.

David McClelland (17:59.521)
Yeah, change is always difficult, particularly when humans are involved. And sensitive change management is, I think, crucial here when we're looking at re -skilling. Let's move on to talk about culture. The context, the cradle within which teams exist is one way of looking at what culture is. But I'm going to turn it over to you. Who's got a quickfire definition for what?

culture is and can describe, Nigel, I'll come to you first, the role that diversity, equity and inclusion plays within creating that culture.

Nigell Todd (18:37.338)
So I think everyone's probably familiar with that saying, culture is what happens when you're not in the room, is what I kind of, it always is at the back of my mind on the definition. But I guess creating that culture that's inclusive, you know, where there's a sense of belonging, there's a sense of being valued, is very important. And then creating that environment of, I think we touched on it earlier, psychological safety, where...

there is a culture of speaking up, but there's respectful debate and conversation and an awareness that there are different opinions and those things are all valued and respected and how you deal with that as a team, I think is quite important in creating that culture. And when it comes to, I guess, D &I or D &E and I,

that sense of inclusion is paramount. We always talk about diversity and inclusion, but inclusion is what I kind of... Another saying that I've heard in the past is diversity is being invited to dance, or to the dance, and inclusion is being asked to dance. So that's where, I guess, being at the table, having different opinions and thoughts at the table is important, but having...

everybody speak and their opinions and comments being listened to and active listening I think is also important as part of it.

David McClelland (20:14.433)
Rosanna, I'll put the same question to you. You have champion in your job title around diversity, equity and inclusion. I'm just curious as to what your take on culture is. I love the culture is what happens when you're not in the room. Thank you for resurfacing that one, Nigel. Do you have any perspective on what culture is and again, how DE &I plays into that?

Rosanna Bruni (20:20.309)
you

Rosanna Bruni (20:40.565)
Yeah, culture is a very important element in, first of all, creating a respectful environment, but also to keeping your people happy and within your team. So I believe, you know, again, as I mentioned, each member brings a value to the table, to each other and to the organization. And what I believe is very important is the empathy part of being a leader.

You could, I think if each member can have this empathy towards each other, and because everyone is living a different life, a different mentality, a different perspective. So how can we, and that's the challenge of managing a team where everyone comes really from different parts of the world, different parts of nationalities, cultures, and the way you think. And it's,

addressing each item, each individual, and looking at what makes them tick and have them being valued again, creating a safe space where everybody can talk, but also to say if that person is having a problem within their families, within even the work environment, for them to come up and say, well, what's going on?

and being able to do something about it. Many times, you know, a problem is brought up, but there's never a solution. Well, I think there is a solution for everything, including the team to be involved in finding this solution. So I think that, again, respecting that person, making sure that the knowledge that everybody has is shared, the perspective and...

This appropriate approach to sustaining engagement is part of it.

David McClelland (22:37.889)
Yeah.

David McClelland (22:42.689)
Yeah, respect is the big word, I think, that I take from that. Geoff, in terms of some of the challenges that we might have in creating a culture using some of the, you know, whether that's respect, whether that's empathy, whether it's that psychological safety, what are the challenges that we have in creating that culture, do you think?

Jeff Schwartzman (23:06.032)
There's a few things. One is that some people don't think it's important. And to me, you could tell. I am who I am, which is fine. We want people to be their authentic selves. We want people... But the point is to bring out everyone's best self. I love when Nigel and Rosanna and Ali talk about inclusion. That's an important thing to always include people on our teams.

Every now and then you see in an organization there's a division or a department that has this amazing culture and people say, wow, if the whole organization was just like that culture, they have this kind of quasi culture or their own culture, which is great because they have a certain amount of the fundamental things that you need to do that. So the challenges are holding ourselves to a high standard. Often I find that people accept mediocrity. They often don't look at themselves as being

you know, what we had caused in the matter. If they would say, it's somebody else, if they had just treated me that way, and I don't look at it that way, I look at it where, you know, if it's up to me, if it's to be, it's up to me, so to speak. So I have to be causing, creating the kind of culture that I want, but also bringing out the best in other people.

David McClelland (24:24.609)
Yeah, that's a really interesting point. And we're going to come onto the leadership piece in just a moment to try and understand the different strategies that we have to create this culture, this cradle for operation, high performance of our teams. Ali, perhaps this goes back to what we were talking about with regards to recruitment and skills, the talent question above, but what challenges...

do you think exists to ensure that our teams are able to reflect the diversity and inclusion values, but make sure that we have equitable and diverse teams from a recruitment point of view? That can also be a challenge, can it?

Alison Hollingshead (25:11.696)
I mean, I think it can. I think, you know, to Jeff's point, I think the most important thing for me is modeling it, right? Like you have to be every day living the culture that you want your teams and your company to be in, right? I think it's very intangible. You know, when you're in a culture that doesn't work for you, you know, when you're in one that does. And I think as you say, when you, when you are recruiting and thinking about and communicating to people what it is that you believe in and how you...

how you carry yourself at work and how you expect them to carry themselves at work. It's a big part of what you're selling to someone who wants to join you. It's really important. You spend so many hours of the day at work and if you're not really feeling comfortable in that space, it can be very hard. And I think that getting that across to people is so important because your culture is a big part of what they're joining.

David McClelland (25:58.241)
Yeah, trust, transparency, ensuring that your workforce can come and have a chat with you as a leader is an important part of that, I think. Moving on to leadership then, so far we've discussed the blend of skills necessary to perform the job at hand and also this kind of culture container that can ensure teams are able to perform at their best. But whose responsibility is it to create, to develop these teams, to

nurture the culture and ensure they continue to perform effectively. Well, that comes down to leadership. So, Jeff, I'll come to you maybe to kick this off on this one. What do you think people expect today from leaders? Both sides, I think that is. There's a two -sided coin. You've got your senior stakeholders and then you've also got the team that you are leading. What are the expectations? Have those changed, do you think?

Jeff Schwartzman (26:58.832)
Well, yes and no. I mean, I think everybody in the back of their mind are always thinking, why should I be led by you? And, you know, it's an important question we like to ask to many of our leaders in our organization and around the world. Just, you know, people want to know they're going to be treated fairly. They want to know that their vision is consistent and we have a plan and a strategy to get to that vision.

And they want to know that they're going to have, like I said, a long career and be connected towards that vision. I often like to say that, you know, the skill that people need, that one of the things that's most important is to be a strategic leader, not just a busy manager. And there's a difference between being strategic, you're tied to the organization, you understand the value, the brand, you understand the P &L and how you and the team relate to the P &L. Even though your job might...

might just be one thing or the teams might be one thing. It's really important to understand how the organization makes money and how we connect to that. So I think people expect a lot of things, either consciously or unconsciously, it's there.

David McClelland (28:13.505)
Yeah, Nigel, I'll come to you in terms of that expectations of leader. And I just wonder if some of the things that we've experienced over the last four or so years, maybe a little bit longer with regards to the context in which leaders lead this increased move to working from home, enforced move to working from home, for example, and flexible working, has that for you changed your role, perhaps in a leadership role and maybe the technology that we use and the increased automation?

of some of the roles, has that changed the fundamentals of leadership for you?

Nigell Todd (28:48.365)
I think people, I think you have to be saying no to, there hasn't been any change. I think it's going to be hard for some people to say. I think, you know, in the last four to five years, being empathetic is what Rosanna had mentioned, has been very key, compassionate.

And how I started out this conversation was around trust. And we have to trust that our people are doing the right thing. And I think there's very much a care of duty for managers to trust their employees. But yeah, there's definitely things have changed for leaders in the past couple of years. But it's more on the softer skill side, where we demonstrate that kind of.

checking in on well -being with our teams and individuals, having a personal kind of conversation. You know, it's not, yes, there's a business side to it, but also there's a personal side and showing that empathy from a personal level, I think is quite important to develop relationships and getting the best out of people.

David McClelland (30:04.385)
Ali, you spoke about psychological safety when we kicked off our conversation today. And I just wonder as a leader, the ways in which you try to create that psychological safety space for your teams.

Alison Hollingshead (30:08.106)
Mm.

Alison Hollingshead (30:20.265)
So I think this thing's kind of echoing for me all over the conversation, right? I think that it's so important to understand your people. I think you have such a responsibility to understand the individuals and what motivates them and what makes them tick and how they best operate and how you best create the conditions for them to be successful. I think that to that psychological safety point, people feeling safe to challenge, feeling safe to challenge, feeling safe to give feedback, feeling safe to receive feedback and take it positively.

and constructively. Yeah, I think these are all really important things. You know, we try to build a real culture of why, right, of always asking why, and of kind of digging through the whys until we get to the one that really matters. And it's one that my head of training and I are both very wedded to, and we try to bring across the teams. You know, you come into a place, I've been here nearly two years now, you come into a place and you're trying to understand, you know, why things are done the way they are, and you get all these answers that seem to make sense. And if you keep digging, there's always a deeper reason or a thing you can get to or as you know,

and motivation you can get to find a better answer and a better way to change. And yeah, I think just being open and listening and caring goes a long way with people. And if they really believe that you're authentic and that you genuinely are trying to improve things, then they'll get on board. I think a big part of it is taking people on the journey.

David McClelland (31:38.241)
Jeff, very quickly, I'll come to you. We were speaking about skills for teams and ensuring they got the right technical skills and the right soft skills. Management skills, leadership skills are really important here as well. And I feel as though it'd be quite easy to take that for granted. But if you are to lead a team effectively, you need to keep your skills sharp. You need to keep your mind open as a leader.

Jeff Schwartzman (32:06.064)
Definitely, one of the things we've, Nigel was talking about those professional skills that people need and that's what we call them as professional skills. The ability to communicate effectively, both written and verbally. We talked about being strategic, really, really important, but that constant evolution for yourself to develop your skills. The ability to persuade an influence is not gonna go away. That is a professional skill that everyone has, no matter your age, no matter your experience.

We've got to have those skills that are important to us. The ability to tell story through data. That's going to be really, continue to be really important moving forward. So I think for everybody, continuous improvement is critical for a career. It shouldn't stop after university or after high school. It's learning. And I don't mean for the sake of taking a test. I mean for the sake of learning and growing and developing.

and you want to put a business term to it, to producing more. It's all about performance and producing more.

David McClelland (33:10.049)
Speaking of continuing professional development, Rosanna, you took a course at the University of Concordia last year called Feminist Leadership, I think it was. Tell us about that.

Rosanna Bruni (33:21.653)
Yeah, so I went back to school after retiring, if you want from PSP. And it provided me with words about my leadership skills, which really emphasizes universal quality leadership qualities. And these are active listening, empathy that we talked about, trust and compassion. Now, don't get me wrong, my team was effective.

and efficient and we got things done. But genuine care for each team member is so important. I believe that in the financial world, if we can adapt these skills, we can have maybe better employees that keep learning, keep being heard. And really to recognize each member's role in contribution.

and really a support system where everyone have each other's back within the team and within the leader and within management. I believe all this cohesive open -mindedness to help the employee to keep learning is extremely important.

David McClelland (34:42.913)
All right, thank you. Thank you. Sounds like a great course, a great experience. And it's fantastic how you're sharing those experiences with others as well. So we're going to come on to some audience questions in just a moment. But just to wrap this part of our conversation, I'd like to do just a very quick, quick fire question to each of you. And this may be a recap of some of your points so far, but if I could ask you to boil down.

your advice to leaders who are listening, who are watching today, who want to create that winning culture for their teams. If I could ask you to boil that down to, let's say two points, if you have one or if you have three, then that's fine as well. But I'm going to throw you two. What would those two headline points be? Nigel, I'll come to you first of all.

Nigell Todd (35:30.949)
I encourage diversity of thought, creating that psychological safety, speaking up environment for people to express their opinion. But also, ask yourself constantly, are you getting the best out of your individuals? Is that a particular individual or individuals expressing a specific skill set that is being underutilized?

can look out for opportunities for them to practically apply that. And that will be, I guess, beneficial for the firm, for the individual.

David McClelland (36:11.457)
Good stuff. Thank you, Nigel. Same question to you, Alison. Two -ish takeaways.

Alison Hollingshead (36:19.617)
So I think be very clear and understand and be able to communicate and live your kind of purpose and your strategy so that people know what you're about and what you're trying to achieve. And then I think the second would be that it's not about you, right? When you come in the morning, you should be thinking about what do my people need to be the most effective they can be today and how do I make that possible?

David McClelland (36:43.137)
Pretty good, thank you. Jeff.

Jeff Schwartzman (36:47.6)
I would say it's the willingness to grow, so continuous improvement for yourself, and setting your people up for success, whatever that means, so important. But I can't go out without saying inclusion and including people. And one of the ways we do that is to be kind. I think we often, especially in the world today, need more kindness. It is not a weakness. It's actually a huge strength to be kind, especially in this industry. If you can do that, you will have a high -performing team and just a...

a wonderful culture and environment that you've set for everybody.

David McClelland (37:20.609)
Thank you. Finally, Rosanna.

Rosanna Bruni (37:23.317)
Well, to me, I would encourage everyone to create a learning environment where it's fun to come in and to learn something new, to have some personal development. And also, I believe that being inclusion is very important. I believe that it doesn't have to be just gender. It could be different attitudes, different personalities, different cultures.

It's just being inclusive in every way and making sure that you listen to your employee. Because sometimes we listen, but we're not actively listening.

David McClelland (38:04.065)
We hear, but we don't listen. Yeah. Yeah. Do you know the word I wrote down that I think encapsulates, it's not in itself necessarily a piece of advice, but there is a theme that maybe runs between a lot of what you mentioned and it's humility. There's a sense of humbleness that I think it would be helpful to have in order to enact some of the advice that you've just shared.

Rosanna Bruni (38:05.213)
Yeah.

David McClelland (38:32.385)
Thank you very much indeed. Let's pop over to some quick questions from our community. Community questions, I'm calling these today. And our producer Oliver, who's been out and about collecting questions from you, from you, our listeners, to put to our panel on the theme of creating this winning team culture. First up from somebody, thank you if this is you, from Federated Homes. How do you balance modern performance measurements, advisory roles, and adding value to...

investments. How do you balance modern performance measurements, which of course are a thing, advisory roles and adding values to investments? Anyone have anything to add on that one?

David McClelland (39:19.873)
Ali looks as though she might be about getting ready to run with that.

Alison Hollingshead (39:21.724)
I've got some thoughts. I was thinking about it a lot kind of in the context of execution measurement, you know, as in there's a lot of data, there's metrics around measuring execution. But for me, they aren't really metrics about measuring performance. We're an active desk and it's important that traders are free to execute as they say fit at any point in time. And while these execution metrics are really important from an oversight and compliance and strategic monitoring, for individual performance, it's not really necessarily the right metric.

You know, we have like, I have a fixed income trader, for example, who puts in an objective about capturing a certain percentage of bid -offer spread. And that's what he's holding himself to. And that might be completely different to someone else on the desk, but it's relevant and specific to him and what we're looking for him to achieve. So I think, you know, we want to set objectives and goals, which help us to see inquisitive traders who are challenging the status quo and who are kind of trying different things, but with a data driven outcome in mind. So for me, I think I want to be very careful about the difference between, you know, TCA,

execution metrics and performance metrics on an individual basis.

David McClelland (40:26.849)
Okay, okay. Thank you very much indeed. Just so we can get through the other questions, I'll move on to our next one. This is from somebody from Vanguard. Thank you, if this is you. How do you view reducing key person risks by diversifying skill sets? What if you've got a person who is maybe a single point of failure and if they're off, then the desk is off. Nigel, is that something that you have to encounter or you've already mitigated against?

Nigell Todd (40:52.581)
I think in our roles we're always looking at succession planning, ensuring that we're mitigating some of that risk. I guess how I look at this is bringing somebody else alongside me to, whether it's governance forums, board meetings, or just in general, steering committees, so that someone is in the room that can navigate through that kind of environment. Also, is putting forward their thoughts and opinions.

David McClelland (40:55.809)
Mm -hmm.

Nigell Todd (41:22.437)
in addition to mine and is comfortable should they get to that next stage to be in those environments and people are also familiar with those individuals and they're building their...

David McClelland (41:35.297)
Okay, thank you. Thank you very much, Nigel. Look, I'm going to call it, we are out of time for today. Sorry we didn't get to your question if you asked one, but maybe we'll be able to do that at another time. But yes, we are out of time for today and indeed for this mini -series. Thank you, Ali, Nigel, Geoff and Rosanna for joining us today, and indeed to all of the guests that we've had in this series.

A reminder that you can catch up with our previous episodes on AI and trading and T plus one readiness wherever you found this episode. And if you like what you heard today, then hey, share it with your colleagues. Leave us some feedback. The CMX page on LinkedIn is a great place for that. And while you're there, perhaps tell us what you'd like us to cover in future episodes. And speaking of the future Thursday.

27th of June 2024 sees the inaugural Capital Markets Exchange event take place in London where you can look forward to, well, conversations like we've been having here today in this podcast and many, many more. Head over to the CMX website at the -cmx .com, that's the -cmx .com, to find out more and to register. But that's it for today from this mini -series, from those of us on the call today.

From me, David McClellan, from producer Oli, and from editor Dan, thank you for listening. And from us all, until next time, goodbye.