"You know everybody, but you know nobody." That's how Gavin McQuillan, Head of Learning & Development at NatWest, describes connection at work right now. He joins Mindflick co-founders Sir Andrew Strauss and Dr. Pete Lindsay on the latest episode of The Performance Mindset Podcast.
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About this episode
Gav McQuillan joined the Royal Bank of Scotland at 16 and now leads learning for 60,000 colleagues at NatWest. In the latest Performance Mindset podcast, he sits down with Mindflick co-founders Sir Andrew Strauss and Dr. Pete Lindsay to talk about keeping people performing when transformation never stops.
Gav's view is that most leaders already know the theory. People drive performance. The gap shows up when the pressure's on: a deadline, a target, a deal to land. That's when the people side gets dropped for the quicker answer, and that's where he thinks the real opportunity for leaders sits.
Across the conversation, Gav and the hosts get into why a crisis can pull a team together faster than a normal Wednesday, how he moved a village-sized learning team from a federated model to one team for the whole bank, and why getting the balance wrong between challenge and support does equal damage in either direction. Andrew draws the parallel with his England days, when team dynamics got worked on out of season and post-mortemed after the fact. Pete unpacks the difference between cognitive and emotional connection, and why most of us settle for the first and assume it's the whole story.
Also on the table: why it's easier to stand against something than stand for something, how to disagree without disconnecting, and Gav's take on AI, summed up in one line. It helped him with knowledge, not behaviour.
He closes with the one thing he'd tell any leader to pay attention to. It's simpler than you'd expect. You'll have to listen to hear it.
Tune in to the full conversation with Gavin McQuillan, Sir Andrew Strauss and Dr. Pete Lindsay in the player above
