To Thine Own Self Be True – Shakespeare Visits FinTrU

FinTrU receives leadership lessons from Shakespeare

While Shakespeare wrote about the full gamut of human emotion, to the best of our knowledge none of his plays directly mention Client Lifecycle Management or anti-financial crime processes. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t learn a thing or two from the bard.

In our latest Lunch & Learn, we hosted Trevor Gill, Artistic Director of Bright Umbrella Theatre Company, who spoke about the leadership lessons we can take from Shakespeare’s texts – lessons which are as relevant today as they were 400 years ago.

Learning and Development is a core part of our company DNA and the learning process comes in many forms. Trevor’s talk focussed on five key areas of leadership, including building trust rather than authority, creating purpose people can believe in, and how ambition should be anchored in ethics. These leadership lessons were parallelled to famous Shakespearian characters – from the good (Henry V) to the not-so-good (King Lear). In short, Shakespeare was not asking whether a leader is powerful, he asked are they worthy of power.

Shakespeare was not only a celebrated poet and playwright but was also a successful businessman and entrepreneur with multiple income streams (writing, acting, theatre ownership, property). He may not have been around for the last four centuries but he still has a thing or two to teach us about leadership.

FinTrU is the official partner of Bright Umbrella’s The Macbeth Project – an educational theatre programme in Northern Ireland.