Title: Senior Risk Manager

Department: Risk Insights & Reporting

Joined TAL: January 2019

I’d never really seen myself as a ‘People Leader’. When my career started, I thought that I’d concentrate on honing my technical and analytical skills as I really liked working with data. But early on in my time at TAL, this started to shift. I expressed to my manager that I’d like to explore more options around managing a team. I was keen to have the chance to help develop people—just like my managers had helped me.

Soon enough, the opportunity to step-up came to fruition. From my perspective, the timing felt perfect. I’d found myself in a nice rhythm with the business-as-usual aspects of my role and the reporting responsibilities - so I was ready for a new challenge.

As I stepped into more of a leadership position, one of the key things my manager worked with me on was developing more presence in meetings. Previously, I’d been a bit more reserved. I started sharing more opinions and taking a bigger role in shaping discussions. I also took the chance to present, both within my team and to other areas of the business. I even signed up for a Toastmasters program in my local area to work on my public speaking skills, which helped grow my confidence.

I was also given the opportunity to go on a week-long leadership course. This covered what it means to be a ‘people leader’, not just a manager, as well as some of the likely challenges that arise and how to address them.

Soon enough, I was putting these learnings into practice with my new report, Kelvin. To start with, I found it hard to separate our individual responsibilities, but as I worked through issues with my own manager, I became a more confident leader. This in turn allowed me to give Kelvin the ownership of tasks he needed to thrive.

After three years, Kelvin got promoted himself and it’s been so rewarding to think I helped contribute to that. I’ve seen him gain confidence and develop his skills, while working on my own capacity to be a flexible and supportive leader.

More recently, I’ve been given the chance to get involved in project management, and while it’s early days, it’s something I enjoy exploring. I’ve been shadowing the Project Manager on a project that’s due for delivery mid-next year, and he’s been generous in giving advice and showing me how he does things, and I have recently completed the Prince 2 certification in Project Management to add to my toolkit!

Everyone is so supportive and happy to discuss different career paths, giving you opportunities to see what you enjoy and could be good at.

Interested in applying?