Interview with Samantha Thompson | Alumni Series
We sat down with Senior Leaders Programme alumna, Samantha Thompson of Anglo American, who shared her experience of the programme and how it helped her leadership and career development.
What were the highlights of the WIG Senior Leaders Programme?
I think the highlights for me were really meeting people from across the sectors - from government, from other public organisations, from NGO - and the quality of discussion that we could have because of the different backgrounds and perspectives that that we had, but also recognising that we were all trying to solve quite similar problems. That was a real highlight because you get reassured that you're not alone, but also can come up with some really good solutions and ideas to things that practically then you can implement in your own organisation.
What made the WIG Senior Leaders Programme different to other development programmes you may have been on in the past?
The WIG Senior Leaders Programme was different from other leadership programmes I've done, partly because of the nature of the small group action learning sets that we broke out into, which gave us time to explore quite personal issues that perhaps you couldn't explore within your own organisation because of the nature of those issues. I think the other thing that was quite different and quite striking was that cross-sectoral mix of attendees. Again, you don't necessarily get that in some of the programmes that some of the other leadership programmes that are out there.
What impact has the WIG programme had on you and your organisation?
It was that reassurance that some of the questions or challenges that I'm facing, I'm not facing alone and that they are common across sectors. For example, that could be the future of the workforce - what that's going to look like? How do you deal with the impact of COVID-19? How do you deal or have a resilient business in the face of the net-zero transition? Things that are quite big, chunky societal problems. It’s like, oh, we're not alone. Other people are thinking about these things. And actually, if we all join up together, we can all come up with better solution, so that was a really positive impact.
What would you say to others thinking about doing a WIG programme?
For anyone thinking of doing a WIG programme, I would say go for it, right. I have to say I didn't really know what to expect when I signed up for the Senior Leaders Programme. I just thought, well, I'll meet some great people, I will learn something - in terms of exactly what, I didn't know. It was honestly different to how I'd imagined. I wasn't familiar with the action learning set format before. But actually, it grew on me. I learned a lot. So yes, anyone who is sort of not sure, I would say just go for it because you will take something positive from it.
What does collaboration mean to you?
Collaboration for me means getting different perspectives from different people, different ideas, so that you can work together to come up with the best solutions for whatever challenge you're trying to overcome.
I think I've come away from various experiences, including the WIG Senior Leaders Programme, realising that actually disagreement is a good thing if it is engaged with in a positive and constructive way where you're all learning from it and then coming up with the best, as I said, solution or outcome or suggestion for whatever challenge that you're facing. So to me that's a real collaboration, getting those diversity of perspectives and synthesising them into something that is better.
What personal insights did you gain from the course?
I work in a publicly listed company. Again, one of the other insights for me: it was really interesting to get the perspectives of the civil servants and the people working in government particularly. We're going through a really interesting time in the UK politics. So just hearing what was going on behind the scenes actually that was really insightful and that can play into some of the conversations that you have in the work context as well. For me, that was fascinating.