Resilience, identity and allyship: what modern leadership really asks of us

In brief
At the opening session of the first Women in Transformation Summit, Caroline Woodbridge-Lewin, Head of the Defence AI Centre, and Andy Haley, CEO of Sullivan & Stanley, discussed what helps people lead through constant change. Both argued that resilience comes from simplifying priorities and knowing yourself, and that allyship means creating the conditions for others to succeed.

At the first Women in Transformation Summit, we wanted to take the candid conversations that have shaped our community over the past three years and amplify them. That meant creating space for different experiences of leadership, not to arrive at a single answer, but to understand what helps people lead when the environment around them is changing quickly.

Women in Transformation (WiT) is our Community for senior women leading and delivering change across some of the UK’s largest organisations. Over the past three years, we’ve brought the community together around smaller tables to share experiences, challenge thinking and talk openly about the realities of transformation. The Summit was the next step in that journey. Under the theme of ‘Amplified’, we brought more voices into the conversation while creating a bigger platform for the ideas, experiences and perspectives that have always made the community valuable.

Our opening conversation brought together Caroline Woodbridge-Lewin, Head of the Defence AI Centre, and Andy Haley, CEO of Sullivan & Stanley. Their careers have taken them through very different environments, but the discussion revealed plenty of common ground.

Perhaps most importantly, both challenged the idea that resilience is simply about becoming tougher.

Resilience starts with knowing what matters

Caroline has spent more than three decades in the Army, leading teams from 30 people to around 2,500 and operating in environments where priorities can change rapidly.

Her experience of resilience, however, is shaped as much by life outside work as it is by military leadership. She spoke openly about divorce, raising two daughters as a single parent and recovering from a brain tumour, experiences that have changed how she approaches pressure. The lesson she has carried into leadership is the importance of simplification.

“Resilience for me comes from being able to simplify, to make it easier for everybody to understand in the room, and to make sure that you bring priorities there.”

That feels particularly relevant to transformation leaders. Complexity can easily become something we learn to live with, but resilient leadership is partly about cutting through it. What matters most? What are we actually trying to achieve? What can the team control?

Andy made a similar point from a different perspective. As technology becomes increasingly commoditised, he argued, transformation is becoming more dependent on our ability to understand and influence human behaviour.

Technology still matters enormously, but installing it is rarely enough. Leaders have to create an environment in which people understand the outcome, care about achieving it and have enough freedom to work out how best to get there.

You cannot lead others without understanding yourself

One of the most personal parts of the conversation centred on identity.
Caroline described spending the early part of her career trying to fit into a predominantly male environment, competing with the men around her and adapting how she behaved to belong. It took until her thirties to become more comfortable with her own leadership style.

“Quite often when you're in those environments, you become more like them than really trusting yourself to be who you are.”

There is a wider leadership lesson here. Self-awareness is not introspection for its own sake. It affects how clearly you communicate, how you respond under pressure and how safe other people feel challenging you.

As Caroline became more comfortable with herself, she also became more comfortable being direct when something was not good enough, without believing that being demanding meant she could not also be human.

Andy approached the same issue through perception. Leaders need to understand not only the person they intend to project, but how that person is experienced by everybody else. The gap between the two can have a significant impact on trust.

Allyship is about creating the conditions for others to succeed

That brought us naturally to allyship, and to a definition that went beyond gender.

For Andy, allyship means understanding what makes somebody uniquely themselves and creating an environment in which they can play to those strengths. That includes giving people space to try something difficult, celebrating them when it works and supporting them when it does not.

Caroline broadened that idea further. At different moments we might be an ally, mentor, follower or role model, and none of us reaches a point where we have finished learning.

Her own support networks, from fellow leaders to longstanding friends and teammates, have been an important source of resilience. Just as importantly, mentoring others gives her an opportunity to share lessons she had to learn herself.

For organisations facing continuous transformation, this matters. Resilience cannot simply be an individual responsibility, where we ask people to cope with more uncertainty and pressure. We need cultures and relationships that make people more capable of navigating it together.

That was an appropriate place to begin a Summit built around the idea of Amplified. Strong leadership does not have to mean being the loudest or most certain person in the room. Sometimes it means knowing yourself well enough to simplify what matters, trusting others enough to give them space and recognising when somebody else needs you in their corner.

At a glance: key themes from the conversation

Want to know more?

If the themes explored here resonate with you, we’d love to continue the conversation. Our Women in Transformation Community brings together senior women working across change and transformation to share experiences, challenge thinking and learn from one another. If you’d like to find out more about the community, explore joining us at a future event or simply discuss any of the ideas raised in this article, get in touch with the S&S team.