By Lucy Morris
Unilever has experienced 100 years of growth. From mergers in 1929, attempted takeovers in 2017, and IPOs in London, New York and Amsterdam along the way, it’s seen it all. For 22 of those years, Tonia sat within their legal team and held roles such as UK General Counsel, Chief Legal Officer and Global Company Secretary.
Tonia trained at Linklaters and joined their corporate department for nearly five years before moving in-house with Unilever. Whilst she thought the move would be for a couple of years, 22 years later, she found herself still there. In 2018, Tonia began a portfolio career, with a mix of non-executive roles (predominantly with EY) and her own professional executive coaching business.
Last week, Tonia and I discussed her impressive career and what it was really like to be in-house counsel and non-executive for two of the biggest companies in existence. Our conversation is organised into three core areas:
- Stepping into a leadership role
- Working with boards and executive committees and;
- Managing imposter syndrome and the benefits of coaching.
This article provides a summary of the discussion, but you can view the full interview here.
How to be an impactful legal leader, and how to get the job in the first place.
Q: How did you manage the initial transition into a leadership position?
To my surprise, Tonia’s initial reaction was that the first transition wasn’t difficult because she felt ready to be a leader. Rather, the challenge was landing the role in the first place. She had been a corporate lawyer for 10 years and her boss at the time was under the assumption that a new, big, corporate role would be more appealing. Tonia explained that a lesson learnt in this scenario was that if you know what you want, ask, and fight for it – because, as her boss told her at the time, “I’m not a mind reader”.
In terms of handling that kind of conversation, we agreed that lawyers are not typically good at selling themselves. If you’re looking to step up into your first leadership position (specifically those that involve leading a team) and perhaps you haven’t had line management experience yet, Tonia emphasised that you must prepare how you are going to sell yourself and say “I’m ready for this. I’ve got the skills and experience that’s necessary to lead a team. I’ve got the vision and the ideas as to how to lead a team. So, you know, take a risk on me.”
Q: How do you balance the voice of caution and ability to protect the business, whilst also driving growth of the business?
Tonia explained a coaching method she often uses, called Newton’s cradle, which depicts a ball that swings from side to side, “swinging from protecting the company all the way through to helping the company to win… and that’s what an in-house lawyer needs to do.” Sometimes lawyers need to wholeheartedly protect the company, but at other times, they need to swing through those shades of grey, managing legal risk and understanding the business’s appetite for risk in order to help the business to unlock its ambitions.
Regardless of business size or structure, Tonia explained that effective legal roles are almost always a case of evolution and there is no one-size-fits-all. The timing might be about building growth and there are instances, such as a sale or IPO, or a global group restructuring, where specific skills and experience are helpful. But there are legal leaders that are strategically excellent, manage risk perfectly and are deeply trusted by senior stakeholders, and they may be the best option to carry a particular business through, even if they have never done an IPO before.
“There’s so much more to an in-house lawyer, particularly the more senior you get… in a boardroom where there is a crisis, the lawyer should be the calmest person in the room.”
Q: Do you have any top lessons, tips or experiences for building and recruiting a team?
Tonia emphasised that once you reach the interview stage, it is vital that hiring mangers take a hands-on approach and that by asking the right questions, you can get a real sense of whether or not a candidate “has the right risk appetite, the right way of talking; not overly legal and relaxed in a sort of business sense, whether they will fit in and gel within your environment, and the fact that they might not fit in with your company, doesn’t mean that they’re not well suited for another company.”
“I think the legal roles are so unique that maybe an internal HR Recruitment team are not often best place to be able to sift through the CVs”
Imposter Syndrome, mistakes and the benefits of coaching.
Q: In your career to date, can we have a chat about a kind of mistake that you perhaps made and how you’ve learned from it?
I loved this response so much that I’m going to leave the natural transcription here, but Tonia also mentioned another example, which you can view here.
“The first mistake I made was in the very early days in Unilever and we had been working on disbanding a sort of distribution, which took a lot of time and lot of effort. We had to send out lots of termination letters and I realised we’d made a mistake in terms of counting the days that we needed for the notice period.
I remember my boss at that time had this phrase that ‘every problem is an opportunity’ and so I took the lift to the executive floor and just as the door opened, he was there leaving for the night and I just said to him, ‘I’ve got an opportunity for you.’
He turned round. We walked to his office. We worked through it. It was tough, but we sorted it out. And I learned that when you make a mistake, own up to it, ask for help. The worst thing you can do is to bury it and fret about it.”
Q: You’ve since set up your own coaching business. Was one of the drivers to set that up because you had a positive mentoring experience in your career?
Turns out, it was the opposite. Tonia explained that she had only one coaching session in her entire career, but that it was one of the most powerful hours she had. Tonia explained that through coaching, she had learnt that lawyers are often perfectionists, which can lead to a lack of confidence or imposter syndrome, with the unrealistic expectation that lawyers should know every single legal question thrown their way. Which is nigh on impossible, but more importantly, not what clients or business partners actually want.
“I had massive imposter syndrome. And, I was sitting with these executive committees and the board with these senior people that I was in awe of, and it took me a while to manage my confidence to find where I could add value to find my voice.”
Legal relationship with executive committees and Boards.
Q: Do you think that a General Counsel should be on the board?
“I absolutely believe that the General Counsel should be a fully blown member of an executive team.”
We agreed that a General Counsel plays a powerful role, both within and outside of board meetings doing their role of managing transactions, providing expert legal advice and bringing any legal risks to the conversation. Lawyers often have a unique soft-skill sets, and “the ability to digest a massive amount of information and be able to slice and dice it from both sides, complete strategic oversight, and then deep dive into specific points. And the skill of asking challenging questions and perhaps, being brave enough to address an elephant in the room, holding a mirror up to people” are the exact skills that non-executive directors must have.
Tonia explained a stark difference between the UK and the US, with CEO’s seeing the value of General Counsel on the board more frequently in America, as a General Counsel will often step into several NED roles, almost the opposite to the typical London market.
Q: What’s the most effective way to bring legal perspective into boardroom conversation?
In her coaching sessions, Tonia explained she encourages those stepping up to these roles to reflect on where, outside of the strict legal areas, they can add value. The answer to that is typically risk-related; the reputation of the company, ethical issues andspeaking on behalf of the employee. However, this takes time and preparation to understand where you can contribute.
“Once you’re in the executive committee, you are more than a lawyer. And you have to be”
As a measure of success, Tonia experienced times when her executive colleagues or even the CEO raised legal issues that affected their part of the business. The legal team had managed to embed advice so thoroughly into the performance of issues of different business divisions, that it didn’t need to be her updating people, but came up naturally through business risk.
For Non-Executives, Tonia explained that the challenges are similar to any other NED, and that as you are in an oversight role and are perhaps further removed from your previous specialism, you must manage the fine line between treading on the executives’ toes and delving into operational matters. Rather, you must ensure that everything is covered and bring wider considerations or previous legal comments into a more proactive business setting.
Q: Do you have any thoughts on the reporting lines for a General Counsel, whether that be into a CEO, or CFO?
“I would absolutely say CEO… the general counsel needs to be a sort of confidant of the CEO.”
The status and value of in-house lawyers have risen dramatically, and Tonia rightfully stated that to get the best performance out of the relationship between legal and the business, the lawyers must have a strong relationship with the executive teams they are advising, to help shape the business, starting from the top. The judgement and advice from a good General Counsel, focused on business risk, can quite literally prevent jail time and to enable that, the CEO should be able to come to the General Counsel for matters and opinions outside of the direct legal scope. What do you think about X? Should I fire this person? That’s the type of relationship that is needed, and the reporting line helps cement it.
