It’s great to be back and what a great guest to begin Season 2.
Christina Blacklaws is a former President of the Law Society of England and Wales, the representative body of over 150,000 solicitors. She is an innovator in the legal field, having developed and managed one of the first ‘virtual’ law firms and set up the UK’s very first Alternative Business Structure with the Cooperative Group. She was also one of the first Directors of Innovation at a top UK firm. Christina now runs her own consultancy business providing strategic advice particularly in the areas of transformational change, technological developments and diversity and inclusion. She holds a range of public appointments including chairing two UK Government bodies in lawtech - The LawTech UK Panel and Innovate UK’s Next Generation Services Advisory Group. She is a member of the Ministry of Justice’s Legal Support Advisory Group. Christina is passionate about diversity and inclusion and is the representative for the Women Lawyers Division on the Law Society of England and Wales Council and an active member of Thomson Reuters Women in Leadership in Law Advisory Board. She also sits on the editorial board of Women Lawyers. As President, she spearheaded the largest ever global research on women in law involving thousands of lawyers over 20 countries and resulting in three reports and a UK government backed Pledge.
Christina and I begin, as always, by talking about how her early experiences of leadership impacted her and her leadership. We go on top talk about inclusive leadership, systemic bias and the importance of fully recognising, and then taking care with, your power as a leader. Christina’s moving and inspiring Leadership Letter is to the equally inspiring recipient, the Prime Minister of new Zealand, Jacinda Ardern.
Christina’s ‘To Read’ recommendation is the poetry of Maya Angelou:
https://www.waterstones.com/book/maya-angelou-the-complete-poetry/dr-maya-angelou/9780349006215
And here is a link to Christina’s TEDx talk:
https://www.tedxroyaltunbridgewells.com/video-blog/2020/the-future-is-biased-christina-blacklaws
In this month’s Leadership Letters Lowdown, my To Read recommendation is this article on ‘languishing’, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/19/well/mind/covid-mental-health-%0Alanguishing.html that led me to say more on motivation and emotion in blog posts you can find here: https://www.thecausewaycoaching.com/blog, where you’ll also find the link to Gloria Wilcox’s emotions wheel.
Here’s the link to Karen Eber’s brilliant talk on storytelling for leaders: https://www.ted.com/speakers/karen_eber
And my ‘to listen’ recommendation; The Moth podcast. https://themoth.org/podcast
And you can find the Leadership Letter that this episode is based on here https://www.thecausewaycoaching.com/leadership-letters where you can also find past Leadership Letters and sign up to receive future ones. This is also where you can get in touch to share your Leadership Lowdown recommendations, share your own Leadership Letter for us to feature on the podcast or let us know who you’d like to hear as a guest.
Thanks for joining us and see you soon!
Lizzie
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