People often ask where my interest in leadership began.
They usually expect me to mention university, my first management role or perhaps one of the businesses I’ve helped over the last three decades.
The truth is, it started much earlier.
It started in Scarborough.
As a teenager, while I was still at school, I worked part-time in the tourism industry. Every weekend and holiday during the tourist season. Every school holiday it became a full-time job, and if I’m honest, I treated it like a career long before it was one. I genuinely looked forward to going to work. I looked forward to collecting my wages, saving for a car, pot noodles and chocolate trifle (in that order). More often than not, I’d finish my shift, go home, get changed and then head straight back out again as a tourist, enjoying the very place I’d been helping other people experience all day.
Looking back, I realise just how fortunate I was.
Over four years, I worked for four different General Managers, at what was probably the largest tourism business in the area with up to 4000 guests each week at peak season. Each GM had their own leadership style, personality and way of running the business, which was part of a much larger UK organisation. At the time I probably didn’t appreciate how unusual this experience was. Today I see it as one of the most
valuable leadership educations I could have received.
Two of those General Managers in particular left a lasting impression.
The first was the type of leader people naturally gravitated towards.
He had an infectious combination of intelligence, energy, humour and genuine care for people. You wanted to work hard for him because you knew he genuinely wanted everyone around him to succeed. There was optimism about the place whenever he was around. Standards were high, but so was encouragement. Looking back, I now
recognise many of the characteristics that we associate with outstanding leaders today, although at sixteen I simply knew he made work enjoyable.
The second General Manager was completely different. He had an edge to him. Sometimes he could be unpredictable.
Occasionally he seemed almost reckless. The humour was still there, but people often chose to keep their distance because they never quite knew which version of him they were going to meet.
Oddly enough, we got on exceptionally well. I found his approach exciting, and liked the fact we seemed to get on.
Sitting on a roll of carpet sticking out of a transit van at speed and climbing scaffolding with a can of paint in one hand and a radio in other… are things that still make me smile and shiver equally.
I worked just as hard for him as I had for my favourite General Manager, but for a different reason, and with some notable differences.
So encouraged was I by my favourite GM, that almost every week I would find myself knocking on his office door, or bumping into him somewhere around the site, carrying what I can only describe as a mental notebook full of ideas.
- Ways to improve the guest experience.
- Ideas for saving money.
- Suggestions for changing processes.
- Different ways of organising teams.
Looking back, many of those ideas were probably naïve and almost certainly wouldn’t have worked.
That wasn’t the point. He listened. He challenged. He gave feedback. Sometimes he was blunt. But he never dismissed me simply because I was young or inexperienced.
He reinforced my confidence whilst making it very clear that I still had plenty to learn. That’s a balance that many leaders struggle to achieve.
Even more importantly, he trusted me, regularly handing me projects and roles that were well beyond my experience.
Not because I was ready, but because he believed I could become ready. That simple act of empowerment changed how I viewed myself. It also changed how I viewed leadership.
Those experiences planted another seed as well.
For the first time I genuinely thought I might build a career in tourism.
- I loved working with teams.
- I loved solving problems and getting feedback.
- I loved seeing customers having a brilliant holiday.
- I loved a challenge.
Many of those families could only afford one holiday each year. If our team could make that week memorable, then what we did genuinely mattered.
Only years later, at university, did I discover the academic language for what I had already been experiencing.
- Leadership styles.
- Empowerment.
- Coaching.
- Motivational theory… Maslow et al
- Performance incentives.
- Organisational culture.
- Team development.
I had already seen these concepts in action before I’d ever opened a textbook. One interesting feature of the business was that General Managers were regularly rotated between sites across the UK.
Eventually another new General Manager arrived.
He was perfectly pleasant, competent, professional… but people simply weren’t his priority. His focus was on delivering the numbers. Nothing more.
Gradually, my enthusiasm started to fade.
Going to University became a much easier decision to make. Without that particular GM, my career development would have been pedestrian, unexciting… and down to the whims of different management styles.
Then came the moment that changed everything.
Shortly after graduating I applied for a middle management role within the same company, albeit at a different location.
The assessment lasted two days and involved interviews with a panel of senior executives, with other candidates being much older than me.
One question has stayed with me ever since.
From the senior panel came “which of the four General Managers did you most enjoy working for, and why?”
I explained my choice.
I talked about leadership. About people. About trust. About culture. About how one leader had made everyone around them better.
Then I asked them a question.
“What do you think?”
Their response was immediate.
“It doesn’t matter what style they have, as long as they bring in the money.”
That single sentence ended any ambition I had of building a career there.
Not because results don’t matter. Of course they do. Every business needs commercial success.
But I’d already seen something they hadn’t acknowledged. I’d seen that great results often grow from outstanding leadership.
If your organisational culture values only the harvest, eventually the soil becomes exhausted. Talent leaves. Innovation slows. People stop bringing ideas. Customers notice and growth becomes harder.
Over thirty-five years later, having worked with well over a hundred organisations across engineering, manufacturing, technology, education, professional services and many other sectors, those early lessons still shape how I work with business leaders today.
The businesses that consistently outperform their competitors rarely do so because they have better KPIs. They outperform because they create the conditions that allow people to perform at their best.
The numbers simply become the outcome.
The lessons I learned as a teenager still hold true:
- Great leadership unlocks more than the sum of individual talent.
- People at every level have ideas worth listening to, if someone takes the time to ask.
- Honest feedback builds confidence when it’s delivered with respect.
- It’s perfectly acceptable to challenge an idea without discouraging the person behind it.
- Giving people responsibility before they feel completely ready is often how capability develops.
- Many of the greatest improvements begin as ideas that initially seem unlikely to work.
Leadership isn’t just about achieving this quarter’s numbers. It’s about creating an environment where people, ideas and performance can compound over many years.
Perhaps that’s why, well over three decades later, those early experiences in Scarborough still influence every leadership conversation I have today.
Whether it’s on the mountain side, taking teams on a three peaks adventure, or arranging for a business speaker to meet emerging talent teams… so they can engage head on and build confidence, or simply getting them involved with strategy development… talent finds a way to shine.
Sometimes the most valuable management course you’ll ever attend isn’t a course at all.
It’s simply watching great leaders at work.
Edward Ryder is the founder of Biskit Ltd, and the host of Connect Over A Cuppa.