Jane Aldridge

Jane Aldridge, who leads Coffee UK & Ireland at Nestlé, discusses coping with uncertainty, career advice to her younger self, and what she gained from mentoring.

Transcript

SH: Jane, thank you so much for taking part in Talk with Sally. It's an utter pleasure to have you as my guest. We're looking forward to talking with you, learning from you. But could you please just introduce who you are and what you do so the audience understands?

JA: Thanks for having me. I'm Jane Aldridge and I lead our coffee division within the Nestlé UK and Irish businesses.

SH: I've had the pleasure of helping you transition into your role a few years ago and working with you in developing as a leader and developing your team. What lessons and beliefs have you drawn on to support you and your team through some really volatile and difficult times throughout the pandemic and with the current invasion in Ukraine? 

JA: It's been such a sad and anxious time and remains that way. One of my beliefs has surfaced, through this time and is very current which is that leading with respect and tolerance and patience is critical for everyone's collective state of health, state of mind, good outcomes, for people personally and good outcomes for business.

There was a time going back a few years when I think, people might have felt a trade off with that kind of style. I don't. And I think that's spoken to me personally really volumes in recent times. And I think I don't see that changing from a learning's point of view.

On a much more practical front the requirement in any business, and in our lives, to plan or to have a good strategy is clear. But what I think we've all also learned is the need to have as much, if not double or maybe triple flexibility and agility. Now, with that, it's tiring, it's really tiring. And therefore, another learning is around energy, which sounds really obvious. But managing your own energy levels helping others manage there's, being in tune with that being in tune with both has been another big learning for all of us, all of us and stays this way.

SH: Oh, without doubt, it's you can almost map it can't you, volatility with the energy levels.

JA: Yeah, I think you have to be able to recognise, when you're full of energy and what you can give and when you are totally depleted, and you need to do something to relax and restore. And I don't think we should be ashamed of that or apologise for it.

SH: And you mentioned something really helpful to me, which I've always remembered which is signalling that as well, just being open with yourself and your team about, how are you feeling and if you are feeling that way, just to be honest and not try and mask it.

JA: So, one of the things we've done on a very practical level is we try and have a check in beginning of the big meetings. Particularly the longer ones which can take a lot of energy out of your day and out of you particularly working virtually. A check in is really valuable.

SH: Jane, one thing that's come up time and time again in our work together is your unwavering passion and commitment to greater diversity, greater inclusion and greater fairness in the workplace. I would love to hear practical ways you've been driving this agenda.

JA: Just to confirm what you're saying, I'm really passionate about diversity of ideas. The more ideas the better. And the more diversity we have in our workplace and realising it from a gender equity point of view is an area that I'm particularly sponsoring at the moment.

We’ve been increasing choices around flexibility for everybody in the workplace. We're trying new areas as well. Job sharing is very much in a development stage, and we have got a couple of new, Test and Learns that we're exploring here because there are a lot of related topics that you have to take care of.

We're breathing some new life into our gender equity network. We want everyone in this network, but often to build education on particular topics. And we're really keen to get more and more allies into this from all over to help improve a lot of things, particularly bias. We are by default biased in some area or another. And so, any attention we give as an organization and me personally to being aware of that and correcting it are also areas we're working on a lot at the moment.

SH: If you could go back to your younger self setting out in your career, and you've had a fantastic career within Nestlé. Are there any lessons you'd give yourself as that young aspiring female leader at the beginning of your career ladder to where you've where you've grown and achieved today?

JA: I think the one that really stands out, for me personally, would be to be, and we've heard it before, it's not new, but to be really who you are, be your true self. And know that and always stay in tune with that whether that was on day one or year ten.

The second bit of advice I'd give myself is find every opportunity you can and take every opportunity you are offered. Seeing opportunities for the good. It's important.

And I think probably the third is learn, learn, learn and be proud of that. Take pleasure in it and it will pay back at some point.  The more skills and muscles that we will have, the more opportunities will arrive and the more fun we will have in our careers and in our lives.

SH: I could not agree more. And that's a wonderful way of bringing me to my next question, Jane. Is there a particular way that The Real Method, and the work we've done around high-performance leadership growth, that has stuck with you as learning that you go back to time and time again that's really supported your growth and your development as a senior successful leader? 

JA: There are so many! What I've really enjoyed and works for me really well is a tool. Particularly the examples where we've used different frameworks to map different things, different thought processes, different outlooks, different environments. I like that. Why do I like these? Because they disrupt your mental silos, and they disrupt the way I'm thinking.

So, you look at things in a different light, one that I think stands out for me, which I simplifies The 5Rs. I really like that model. And it pushed me to think across a different time frame and across a different set of criteria that I wasn't quite as comfortable doing previously.

SH: The 5Rs for anyone listening, it's about helping you inside your role, particularly, how are you going to drive successful change as a senior leader in your job? Because the thing that I find, really curious every time is that 9.9 out to the senior leaders, I ask often described their job accurately, they actually can't because no one's asked them.

JA: We hang a lot off the job title. But, that’s not often the role we need to care about.

SH. Exactly. And it changes over time, doesn't it? The more you open as what you want to bring in that role as back to your point about your lessons, your unique self, that having that clarity on the job is vital.

So, to bring our wonderful chat to a close. Right now, people may not be thinking is the time to invest.

There's pressure. There's change. There's uncertainty, which has been all the way through our working partnership together. And we're talking about volatility and how that can be disruptive for leaders. What advice would you give for a senior leader and or their team who are considering investing despite the volatility, despite the uncertainty out there, investing in their growth, their own development?

JA: Look for me, leadership of anything, anyone is a huge responsibility therefore, I ask the question, why wouldn't you invest in that? I find myself saying, what are the things or the topics, what are the barriers to wanting to invest in the first place? Quite often the thought process of working out what those things are is as helpful as anything. If time is ever one of the reasons why you wouldn't invest in your own growth or somebody else's leadership, then I would say that we're not taking our leadership responsibilities seriously.

SH: Great point. And if somebody is wanting to get that budget sign off to invest in themselves, to get their team to that next level of high performance. What advice would you have about bringing that into the business sign-off process?

JA: One of the greatest reasons you might have to needing to address something other than yourself to others, your team is when you listen to some feedback that others might wish to share with you about how you go about your role or how you do or not deliver what you are setting out to deliver. So, one tip I would have is go out and get some constructive feedback, do something quantitative and it's everything's hunky dory and fabulous and you're realising your dreams then probably save the pennies.

But if you find some opportunities in that, then I think you've got a good argument for taking on that type of investment.

SH: And on that note, Jane, thank you so much for your time for sharing your thoughts. It's been a pleasure to have you on Talk with Sally.

JA: Thank you. Pleasure's all mine. Good fun. Good to see you, too.