Alex Marshall - Retail Banking

• What inspires you?
• Why did you choose to join Retail Banking?
• What does your current role involve?
• Can you outline any interesting projects you've been involved with?
• What support and training have you had since joining?
• What qualities do you need to succeed in Retail Banking?
• Why join Retail Banking?
• Who at work inspires you?

Transcript

What inspires you?
I chose to draw this picture because it never ceases to amaze me actually, the world it’s so big, it’s unbelievable and the way that this relates to Barclays is, Barclays is expanding in the world and it’s amazing just where Barclays is and where it’s going and that’s quite inspirational.

Why did you choose to join Retail Banking?
The choice in the end was actually quite easy. The main reason for it was the actual scheme itself. The whole aim of the scheme is focused on leadership and developing that in young people, and from a very early stage you get given responsibility and real live experience in leadership, and that, I think is invaluable, and that is why chose this scheme over other areas of the bank.

What does your current role involve?
My current role involves managing stakeholders, collating information and going out and gathering new information on how customer complaints are handled and then bringing them together and getting the advice of the some of the experienced team members in our business to get a better understanding of what is happening right now. And then trying to predict what is going to happen three years in the future with customer complaints. So it’s quite an interesting piece of work.

Can you outline any interesting projects that you have been involved with?
The project I enjoyed the most was actually part of the graduate scheme itself. One of the first things we did as a group of graduates - we were put together and given a problem, and the problem was, what can the bank do to grow for the next year? You know, they gave us a target of 10%, how are you going to achieve that?

And what we did was we went away with that brief, and we chewed it over together, and then we went out to the leaders of the business and got some of their opinion, got some of our own results from doing some investigation, and then we pushed it all together and we were given some expert advice on how to give presentations in the business environment. We delivered it to the executive, and the feeling and the experience of doing that and doing it well and getting a good reception was just phenomenal and something I’ll always remember.

What support and training have you had since joining?
The support and training I’ve had has been really comprehensive. We’ve got a HR line management team and a management team that’s sort of in role with us. And in your role you have the full access to all the Barclays training that is standard for people working in your area. But through the HR side of things you get a training development budget which we get to choose how we use, which is quite empowering, and also there are several events throughout the year where we get personal development. Things like investigating our emotional intelligence and trying to understand better how we respond to other people, and when you start to apply these things in the context of a business environment, you actually can see how you can use theory to improve how you relate to people, and it’s quite powerful stuff and I didn’t expect that to happen.

What qualities do you need to succeed in Retail Banking?
You need three things. You need energy, because you’ve got to keep going, it’s quite a demanding environment and you’ve just got to be able to lift a room. Part of that I think is having a sense of humour, you need to get the staff motivated sometimes - that can be the only way to get through a really tough day. And I think the final thing is you need empathy. If you’re going to be a leader and that is what the retail programme is about, you’ve got to be able to empathise with the other members of staff, and if you can’t do that then you are just not going to be a good leader.

Why join Retail Banking?
The retail graduate programme - it offers an unprecedented opportunity to develop your leadership skills. You’ll get frontline experience dealing with customers, dealing with staff, in an extremely sort of time pressured and stressful environment. The teams you will be leading will grow rapidly in size, as you stay in the bank you’ll get bigger and bigger teams. And there are very few opportunities, certainly in the financial industry, to get that kind of man management experience. I think if you are looking to develop your leadership skills you can’t find a better place to do that.

Who at work inspires you?
Some of the most inspirational people I have met in Barclays have been some of the long-standing and long-serving people in Barclays Bank. They are people with upwards of forty years experience, and they are passionate about the organisation. And this was something I wasn’t anticipating. I’m used to this modern world where jobs are ten a penny, they come and go, and you swap companies quite regularly, and to find senior leaders with thirty years of experience in one organisation under their belt is very, very interesting and inspirational because they have such a deep knowledge of how the organisation works, where it came from and it’s just inspirational when you see what they have done and achieved and witnessed.