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Welcome to Leading Professionals. Join Professor Laura Empson as she talks to senior leaders from some of the world’s most successful professional organisations about the crucial issues they are currently facing. Each episode reveals the realities that lie beneath the ‘professional’ veneer these highly successful organisations, and their leaders, present to the outside world. Laura uses insights from her lifetime of researching and advising professional organisations to uncover and make sense of the complex, messy and surprisingly emotional challenges of leading professionals, and to identify key learning for all professionals. If you are a professional in a leadership role – or if you simply want to understand your work and your organisation better – then you have come to the right place. Be ready to explore new ideas, challenge your assumptions, and learn to see your world a little differently. Click the subscribe button and to be the first to get episodes of Leading Professionals as soon as they drop. About Professor Laura Empson Laura is widely recognised as one of the foremost thinkers in the fields of leadership and professional service firms. She has been conducting academic research into professional organizations for more than 30 years and acts as an advisor to the leaders of many of the world’s most successful professional organizations. Her focus is always on turning academic insights into practical action. She is Professor in the Management of Professional Service Firms at Bayes Business School, University of London, and Professor of Leadership and Organization at Copenhagen Business School. She also holds Research Fellowships at Harvard Law School and Cambridge University. Her most recent book is Leading Professionals: Power, Politics, and Prima Donnas (2022). Website: https://www.lauraempson.com/ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LeadingProfessionals LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/professor-laura-empson-69820773/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Check latest episodes from Leading Professionals podcast

S4 EP6 - Leading Complex Change: Breaking Through Practical Barriers and Political Resistance

2025/12/01

Guest: Dame Emily Lawson, formerly COO, NHS England, and Head of Number 10's Delivery Unit Emily has considerable experience of leading change in complex professional organisations, including leading the initial rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine programme across the UK. Laura asks: How do you manage to not be overwhelmed by complexity or discouraged by failure? How do you bring the right team together and deal with covert resistance? Website: https://www.lauraempson.com/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LeadingProfessionals LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/professor-laura-empson-69820773/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

S4 EP5 - Becoming "Professional": How to Look, Sound, Act and Feel like a Professional

2025/11/17

Guest: Paul Lewis, Firmwide Managing Partner of Linklaters If you do not fit the conventional image of an elite professional, how do you persuade others that you are, and how do you learn to feel like one? Paul and Laura discuss his own very personal experiences of “becoming professional”. What can be done to help people from non-professional backgrounds to thrive within elite professional organisations? Website: https://www.lauraempson.com/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LeadingProfessionals LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/professor-laura-empson-69820773/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

S4 EP4 - Considering the Future: How AI and Private Equity Will Change Professionals' Work

2025/11/03

Guest: Michael Izza CBE, CEO (former) of ICAEW For almost 20 years, Michael led the ICAEW, with more than 200,000 members in almost 150 countries. So he has a distinctively long-term and global perspective on the accounting profession. Focusing on the interrelated changes of Gen AI and PE ownership, Laura and Michael explore: What is already happening and what changes lie ahead? Website: https://www.lauraempson.com YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LeadingProfessionals LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/professor-laura-empson-69820773/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

S4 EP3 - Electing Leaders: How to Choose Your Leaders and How To Get Elected

2025/10/20

Guest: Michael Ensser, Chair of Egon Zehnder Laura asks Michael: Why does a world leading firm of leadership consultants choose to elect their senior leaders, and how do their elections actually work? They discuss what really goes on behind the scenes of professional service firms’ carefully stage managed leadership elections. Website: https://www.lauraempson.com YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LeadingProfessionals LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/professor-laura-empson-69820773/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

S4 EP2 - Doing the Right Thing: How to Make Ethically Tough Decisions

2025/10/06

Guest: Georgia Dawson, Senior Partner of Freshfields If you are a lawyer you may be able to guess why Laura asks Georgia to explore the challenging theme of professional ethics with her. In a complex commercial, social, and political environment, how do you balance the competing interests of multiple stakeholders? How do you decide, what is the 'right' thing? And then, how do you make sure you do it? Website: https://www.lauraempson.com/ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LeadingProfessionals LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/professor-laura-empson-69820773/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

S4 EP1 - Leading in Uncertain Times: How to Respond to Geopolitical Change and AI Disruption

2025/09/22

Guest: Fabien Curto Millet, Chief Economist of Google. Fabien joins Laura to discuss how he and his team of economists anticipate, analyse, and understand the scale of change with which Google must contend. How does he lead his team of professionals, and manage himself, during these uncertain times? And what does he remember from when Laura taught him Strategy at Oxford 25 years ago? Website: https://www.lauraempson.com YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@LeadingProfessionals LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/professor-laura-empson-69820773/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

S4 EP0 Welcome to Leading Professionals

2025/09/15

Professor Laura Empson introduces key topics and guests from the upcoming series. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

David Bickford: Spies as professionals

2023/12/11

What are the parallels between the worlds of espionage and professional services? Laura and Tony talk to David Bickford, previously General Counsel to MI5 and MI6, about his role as the agencies’ Legal Director and Under Secretary of State. They explore how to build trust when professionals are working remotely, how to collaborate when knowledge is shared on a need-to-know basis, and how to stop powerful professionals from going rogue. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Katherine White: Leading discretely

2023/11/27

Laura and Tony speak to Katherine White, the first Chief Talent Officer of global executive search firm, Spencer Stuart. They explore the challenges of being a senior leader when you are not a fee-earner, and of leading the so-called talent when the fee-earners themselves do not see you as the talent. Katherine explains how she built trust and influence, and how she learnt to add value quickly while working slowly and discretely to bring about change. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Gianpiero Petriglieri: Coming out of the psychological closet

2023/11/13

Gianpiero Petriglieri, Associate Professor at INSEAD, is ranked as one of the top 50 management thinkers in the world. Laura and Tony talk to him about the difficult emotions that often stay hidden and suppressed in organisations and individuals, and how leaders of professional organisations can become more effective when they engage more directly with these emotions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

June Sarpong: Leading as an outsider

2023/10/30

Laura and Tony are joined by June Sarpong OBE, the BBC’s first Global Director of Creative Diversity. They explore how to bring about disruptive change in a large, complex and high-profile professional organisation, and how to get things done quickly in an environment when decisions are taken slowly. June explains how she managed to do all this as an outsider with no previous leadership experience, but a great deal of broadcast experience. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Chris Saul: Subtle power

2023/10/16

Chris Saul is the former Senior Partner of the UK’s most prestigious law firm, Slaughter and May. Laura and Tony explore how leaders use subtle power to build consensus among partners in a professional organisation. They discover some of the secrets of how Slaughter and May has evolved successfully over more than a century, and managed to retain its powerful position at the heart of the UK’s economy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Steve Varley: Profiting from sustainability

2023/10/02

Laura and Tony speak to Steve Varley, EY’s first Global Vice Chair for Sustainability. They find out how he was inspired by Greta Thunberg to try to build a bridge between environmentalism and capitalism, and the skills he used to make this happen. He explains how he created this role in EY to place sustainability at the heart of the firm’s business, and how he mobilised both colleagues and clients to build a significant sustainability practice. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome Back

2023/09/28

Welcome back to Leading Professional People, the podcast that explores the most crucial leadership questions currently facing professional organisations. For this third series, Professor Laura Empson, who has dedicated almost 30 years to researching professionals and professional service firms, will be joined by a new co-host, Tony Hall, Lord Hall of Birkenhead, the former Director General of the BBC. Laura and Tony’s guests include a fascinating selection of senior leaders from professional organisations, including EY, Slaughter & May, Spencer Stuart, INSEAD, the BBC, and MI6. Join them to explore the challenges, confusions, frustrations, and elations that make professional organisations so difficult to lead and so fascinating to understand. Follow this podcast so you never miss an episode. Find out more at lauraempson.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Leadership in the spotlight

2021/07/26

Empson & Morley speak to Tony Hall, Lord Hall, about his time as Director General of the BBC, and his many other high-profile roles. They examine what it is like to lead complex organizations with multiple groups of stakeholders under intense public scrutiny. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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5 out of 5

8 reviews

★★★★★

C. Ignacio Bilbao 2021/03/25

Great podcast

A must-listen podcast for every partner or future partner of professional services firms. It contains a lot of useful information, very generously sha...

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