Meet the leader making a difference with an added touch of fun

Having worked in a variety of human resources roles and been part of major cultural shifts at big businesses like Asda and the Royal Mail, Claire Walton has a proven track record in making a difference at board level.

However, the leadership coach is more keen now than ever about making a difference in business.

For Ms Walton her career has always been about connecting with people on an emotional level.

“I’m big on connecting with people, which I think is completely different to networking,” she says. “Building high trust relationships with people.”

Ms Walton was born in Middlesbrough in the late 1960s. She points out that she was born “south of the water”.

“It means that I was born in the North Ridings of Yorkshire, which I’m still proud of,” Ms Walton said.

Her dad started running a coach business when she was just five years old. It meant her family moved around the country for a while before coming back to Middlesbrough.

“Being a girl I wasn’t allowed to go into the family business,” Ms Walton says.

However, listening to her father’s conversations about the business was one of the reasons why she ditched her initial ambitions of becoming a journalist at the age of 18 to pursue the goal of becoming a manager.

It’s funny how things work out because Ms Walton’s first big challenge would be affecting a cultural change that would help managers become leaders.

In 1989, she joined Leeds-based supermarket Asda. It was just as Archie Norman and Allan Leighton were coming into transform the business.

Ms Walton said: “I was working on a project out of the head office in Leeds to do with introducing some technology. Then I went and worked in the South East.

“One of the main roles I had there was regional HR manager for the South East. Part of that turnaround was about leadership and culture shift.”

Flitting between the North and South is a prevalent feature of Ms Walton’s career as is the volume of interim roles she has taken on over the years.

During her time at Asda, Ms Walton would work on projects focusing on women in leadership roles. She also took a step out of the HR world to run a couple of Asda stores.

Ms Walton said: “This was all in my 20s, which was amazing. Having responsibility for up to 400 people, 30,000 customers a week, profit and loss account responsibility.

“All of that still stands me in good stead now in my 50s. I’ve got a lot of hands-on experience, it’s not just theory.”

Her work around cultural change didn’t go unnoticed as insurance firm Pearl Assurance came calling.

“The reason they recruited me was they wanted some of the experience of the work that we’d done as part of the Asda turnaround,” Ms Walton said.

A few years later Ms Walton, who was a single mum at the time, decided to take a year out from a full-time corporate job.

She then decided to dip her toe into the consultancy world that she operates in now.

While she may have already proven herself at Asda and Pearl Assurance, Ms Walton still had a nagging doubt that she lacked the emotional maturity and life experience to be imparting advice to top level managers.

This is where her focus on connecting with people rather than networking came to hand again.

She said: “I actually reached out to Allan Leighton, who when I left Asda said if you ever want to work with me again just find me and ask, or words to that effect.”

Mr Leighton at this point was the non-executive chairman of Royal Mail and Ms Walton joined him as a corporate change director.

“I did a year there leading a number of projects for them again on cultural change,” Ms Walton said.

Following a year at Royal Mail, she would then take up a string of interim roles at the likes of WHSmith, Dixons Retail, Carlsberg and Quorn in Stokesley, sandwiched between a period of consultancy work.

There was still something holding Ms Walton back from committing to setting up her own business. Instead in 2014 she took a year out and studied for an MBA.

“That was at a point where I knew I wasn’t going to back into a corporate role,” Ms Walton says.

She added: “I did the MBA. It wasn’t to get a qualification to get a job. I had to deal with my own insecurities and my own fears, which was that I wasn’t intelligent, intellectual enough to be operating at the level that I was operating at because I’d never been to university.”

Ahead of completing her MBA, Ms Walton set up Leaders Are MAD, which stands for making a difference.

The name of Ms Walton’s consultancy is meant to reflect her playful nature as well as enabling her to tell stories about some of the more difficult leaders that she’s worked under in the past.

She said: “In my work, we need to be prepared to be a bit more playful. We talk about being innovative and creative but so many people in leadership positions still wear that armour that stops them being vulnerable, being playful. We should be seeing people being more human.”

She’s worked with people at high-profile organisations such as Bradford-based supermarket Morrisons, Northern Rail and Benenden Health.

Ms Walton teamed up with some other former Asda colleagues to help Morrisons implement the same cultural change that they did decades previously.

Ms Walton’s own life has not been without trials and tribulations but she looks back on events such as seeing someone close to her attempt suicide and being on the receiving end of bullying and abuse.

It has helped her understand “why people behave the way that they behave”. She adds: “I don’t think there’s enough empathy, compassion and curiosity in the world at the moment.”

Ms Walton’s aim with Leaders Are Making a Difference is simple.

She says: “I’m not about building a business that I’ll sell in the future. I’m not about becoming a millionaire. I’m after that personal feeling of being connected and making a difference myself.”

Title: Leadership performance coach and director of Leaders are Making a Difference

Lives: Ingleby Barwick, North Yorkshire

Favourite holiday destination: Las Vegas

Last book read: Brainwash by Dr David and Dr Austin Perlmutter

Favourite film: Schindler’s List

Favourite song: Shine – Take That

Car driven: Mazda Mx5 Miata GT

Most proud of: My 28-year-old daughter, Emily, for being an amazing human being

Education: MBA which I completed at 45 years old