Meet & Greet: Charles King, Director, Digital Solutions, Pacific Life Re, Europe

In this week’s Meet & Greet interview, myGwork member and Pacific Life Re’s Director of Digital Solutions' Charles King, explains why he spent an exhausting 10 years “in the closet” at work, and why a decade later 62% of LGBTQ+ graduates are continuing to do the same. He also shares his career journey, as well as how he promotes LGBTQ+ inclusion and work-life balance.

myGwork: Can you tell us a bit about your career journey to date?

Charles: I’ve been working as a Qualified Actuary now for around 15 years and can trace my interest in this career back to high school, where one of my teachers talked at length about his regret at not becoming an actuary. He was miserable, and regretted not pursuing a career where he could ‘do’ rather than ‘teach’. Until this point, the actuarial profession wasn’t really on my radar. In fact I hadn’t even heard of it. I went on to study pure maths as an undergraduate, I loved the subject and towards the end of my degree, I was inspired by a flashback to my teacher’s advice, and looked into getting a placement as a trainee actuary. My first actuarial job was with Prudential; a company I stayed with for almost 10 years before moving from insurance to reinsurance, where I have remained since.

For me the appeal of actuarial work is the diversity of roles that actuaries play. Whilst actuaries are mainly known for evaluating, managing and advising on financial risks; the job is so much more and uniquely combines, business acumen, economics, probability, statistics and investment theory to lead on strategic and commercial decisions.

In my career I’ve undertaken a huge variety of work, demonstrating the breadth of areas actuaries contribute to. This has included developing insurance products, risk management, research & development, pricing, working on implementing new regulations, and more recently on strategic projects, innovation and digital transformation.

myGwork: What's the most challenging aspect of managing people right now?

Charles: My main managerial challenge is trying to drive the organizational change away from more traditional management styles towards enabling self-managing teams. Teams which work together with a high degree of professionalism and are truly empowered to operate independently. This fosters autonomy, creative freedom, improves agility and is a much more fun environment to work in.

However, rigid hierarchies and outdated management styles remain engrained in many parts of larger organisations; financial services being no exception. Evidence shows again and again that “command and control” management is far less effective than network models, where collaboration, self-management, and decentralised decision making are pursued over top-down approaches. Despite this evidence, influencing organizational culture to shift more towards this network approach and instilling an environment where self-managing teams can thrive, is a huge challenge.

It requires shared responsibilities, pushing decision making powers down the organization, letting go, developing clear vision and goals, holding each other to account and a strong learning culture.

myGwork: What attributes do you look for in new recruits and why?

Charles: As an organisation we are constantly looking to reinvent ourselves and challenge the status quo. This, at its heart, relies on strong creativity and innovation skills. Candidates who can demonstrate these skills, or potential in these areas, stand out for me. Typically, this means demonstrating the ability to frame a problem, shape a solution and champion a change. Underpinning this is the need to demonstrate a learning mindset; a strong drive in continuing to build new skills. This applies at all levels of experience. Personal development is never “done”, and given the pace at which the worlds of business and technology are evolving there has never been a greater need to demonstrate sustained investment in personal growth. Underpinning all this is diversity; we won’t reinvent ourselves without fresh thinking and a truly diverse range of personalities, attitudes, values, knowledge, strengths, and skills.

myGwork: How important is LGBTQ+ inclusion in the workplace for you personally?

Charles: On a personal level, it’s incredibly important. I entered the world of work in 2004. At that time, I didn’t really think of my work environment as being non-inclusive – but looking back – it probably was. There was a certain (frankly, societally-pervasive) level of homophobia I was conditioned to just tune out as background noise. I stopped noticing it. Nothing particularly overt, little comments here and there, but enough to keep you feeling like someone who did not fit in. There were no LGBTQ+ senior role models. No marking of events like Pride. No employee resource groups. As trivial as some of these things seem today, they make a huge impact when joining a new organisation. In the absence of them, I stayed “in the closet” for around the first 10 years of my career, and can say first-hand this is just exhausting. Always trying to think a few steps ahead during conversations to steer them away from your personal life. I’m not that great at chess. It damages your authenticity, and therefore your career progression.

Astonishingly, even today, 62% of new graduates are going back into the closet when they enter the workplace. Think about what that means in practice; more than half of all graduates who were able to be themselves at university are entering the workplace are hiding their true self to ‘fit in’. Anything I can do to change that in our organization gets my full attention and support.

myGwork: What's your favorite inclusion campaign to date and why?

Charles: We were privileged at Pacific Life Re to have Ryan Atkin, the first openly gay football referee officiating in the English Football League, come and talk to us about Stonewell’s Rainbow Laces campaign. The campaign is impressive and has helped challenge the alarmingly ingrained homophobia in sport, particularly football.

It has been great to see the Rainbow Laces campaign unite many sport fans and high-profile sports figures in taking a stance on this. Whilst things are improving, we’re still regularly seeing headlines about unacceptable language and behavior on the pitch. Across Europe, 82% of LGBTQ+ people who take part in sport have experienced or witnessed homophobia, biphobia, or transphobia in the past 12 months (Out in Sport, 2019).

myGwork: How do you encourage staff to have a work-life balance, especially with the increase in remote/hybrid working?

Charles: I think it is crucial to set the right tone at the top, and for senior leaders to set a good example. We’ve never been more connected. Having a boss who replies to every email in five minutes when they are supposed to be on holiday sends the wrong signals.

Personally, I’ve found that with the shift towards hybrid working it's very easy to see work-life balance turn into work-life integration. In practical terms, this means longer hours, less time to recharge, and an inability to switch off; all of which inevitably lead to reduced energy levels and reduced workplace performance. Anything that can help reinforce this separation is helpful.

I’ve found Carl Newport’s advice of trying to get into the habit of a consistent daily “shutdown routine” effective in helping me switch off at the end of my day and have encouraged other to give this a go. More generally, I encourage turning off notifications for emails and messenger platforms (and checking these only at prescribed times during the day to help keep focused), getting regular breaks away from your desk, and mixing up how teams meet (we’ve been going for walks and meeting over the occasional breakfast, coffee or lunch).

myGwork: What's the biggest highlight of your career to date and why?

Charles: I could call out lots of amazing projects and teams I’ve worked with over the years, but actually, a real highlight for me was getting to travel. For four years my career involved lots of visits to different offices for a large global reinsurer. This means I’ve been privileged to work all over the world and was given a great opportunity to attain wide experience of different insurance products, markets and cultures. The trips were usually for a few weeks at time, leaving plenty of time to get something out of this personally; by experiencing different cultures and traditions. A real highlight for me was my first trip to Asia in the form of trip to the Korea office in Seoul. The people were so amazingly friendly and such memorable hosts.

myGwork: What was the last book you read? Any interesting take-aways and would you recommend it to fellow leaders?

Charles: The last book I read was Never Split the Difference, by Chris Voss, a former FBI hostage negotiator. It’s a fantastic book and I’d recommend it to anyone looking to brush up their ability to talk people into, or out of, anything. Voss promotes what he calls “tactical empathy”; focusing on the other party to better understand their need and wants through active listening. The book covers lots of tools and techniques you can practice to help with this. One is what he calls “calibrated questions”: a series of pre-determined open questions which can be used to gain more insights. In summary, you determine some “what” and “how” questions to better understand the other side’s perspective:

• What about this is important to you?

• How can I help to make this better for you?

• How would you like me to proceed?

• How can we solve this problem?

These are non-confrontational. They are all about the other person and their agenda. This helps your counterpart think, makes the issues more open, and gets you better answers.

myGwork: What was your last holiday destination and where do you plan to visit next?

Charles: Omicron limited my options recently! My last holiday was a week on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland; the focus of this being getting out of London and into some nature. Reading, walking and time to think. My next planned trip is to visit Germany in June, as my partner is German, and we will being heading over to visit his family.

myGwork: What do you do to unwind at the end of a hard day?

Charles: If I’ve got the energy it is always great to fit in a short visit to the gym. Even when my motivation is lacking, I always feel so much better afterwards. Furthermore, living in London means there is always so much on the go. I enjoy theatre, comedy and checking out new restaurants. If the pandemic has taught me anything it is just how much I value meeting friends and having a change of environment.

You can find more about Charles and connect with him here.

Check out some of myGwork's other recent Meet & Greet interviews, including:

• Booth-Laird Investment Partnership’s CEO Jonathan Booth shares why there are so few ‘out’ CEOs and leaders in the corporate world.
• Business Disability Forum’s CEO Diane Lightfoot shares the importance of being able to work in an environment where everyone is able to bring their whole selves to work, without having to conceal any aspect of who they are.
• Parexel's LGBTQ+ ally and Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion Aida Sabo shares her career journey on how she made it to the top in engineering as a Latina woman.
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• London-based DJ, radio host, filmmaker, social influencer and CBK CEO Krystal Lake explains why organizations need to take homophobic remarks and labels seriously, and do more to promote LGBTQ+ inclusion.
• Criteo's SVP of Global Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Rachel Scheel on how and why she supports diversity and LGBTQ+ inclusion as an ally, as well as workplace wellbeing.

• The Galaxy Trust’s CEO Garry Ratcliffe shares how being an 'out' leader with a collaborative and inclusive leadership style helps to promote equality, belonging and a blame-free culture.
• RS Components’ Group Head of Diversity, Inclusion and Engagement Jessica Chu highlights the 'huge' importance of LGBTQ+ inclusion at work and shares why being an LGBTQ+ ally is really important to her.
• Swapi CEO Pete Howroyd who talks about workplace equality and LGBTQ+ inclusion, and the importance of ensuring that every voice is heard.
• Unilever’s HR Vice President Richard Sharp shares why leadership has a duty to ensure that the LGBTQ+ community feels supported and included in the workplace.
• Greenhouse Software CEO Daniel Chait shares why belonging is one of the company’s core values, as well as a powerful business strategy.
• Burberry's Global Diversity & Inclusion Manager Safia Ann Kukaswadia highlights how she is addressing key challenges facing minority communities to gain fair representation within fashion and why the industry needs more LGBTQ+ role model leaders.