Bruntwood CEO: Don’t let weaknesses hide your superpower

Business leaders should understand that someone’s weakness can be hiding a great strength and use that to build great teams.

That is according to Chris Oglesby, the chief executive of Bruntwood, who was speaking on the latest episode of the Business Leader podcast.

The episode looks at how Oglesby built Bruntwood into one of the biggest and most important businesses in northern England. The property developer is behind many of the regeneration projects in Manchester and throughout north-west England in recent years. It owns more than £1bn of assets and is working on projects that cover millions of square feet, including new offices, laboratories and the regeneration of town centres.

Oglesby succeeded his father Michael as chief executive of Bruntwood in 1999. Michael founded the business in 1976, but Chris has dramatically scaled up and grown the business.

I was lucky enough to gain a fascinating insight into Bruntwood by studying the business and speaking to Chris Oglesby. A couple of things stood out that I wanted to share with you.

Firstly, his belief in the power of symbiosis. Oglesby is a keen reader and recognises this trait as one of Stephen R Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – think win-win. “I genuinely believe that's what we do in business. We've got to make the whole greater the sum of the parts,” he says. “I can't stand conflict that destroys value.”

Second, Oglesby thinks that someone’s weakness can hide their strength and that neurodiversity within a business is, therefore, really powerful. This approach stems from his father being severely dyslexic.

“These perceived weaknesses are often shadow sides of massive strengths,” Oglesby says. “I’m sure my dad's creativity was a massive byproduct of that [his dyslexia].”

Oglesby says that businesses should aim to “spend more time around people who think differently and get challenged by people who think differently”.

He adds: “My dad used to say: ‘To thine own self be true’. This generation has said: ‘Be yourself.’ Our colleague proposition here at Bruntwood is: ‘Shape your world’. We really do encourage colleagues to be themselves and spend time doing personal analysis that gets you to understand your strengths and what we call your shadow sides of that strength – and then how you manage it.

“There's no question that we've suppressed people for attention deficit, whether it's hyper, ADD (attention deficit disorder) or ADHD (attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder). You think about organising yourself properly but should recognise that if you try and suppress these things you end up losing your superpower ultimately.

“At a future point in my life I'm quite keen to spend some time studying successful people, particularly chief execs, to look at the neurodiversity among them. I spend a lot of time with very successful chief execs through the networks I'm involved with and, certainly my wife, who is a former medic, says there is a common thread among a lot of us. I think we don't spend enough time with kids in schools explaining that.”

And what does his wife say is the common thread? “There's a fair amount of ADHD, ADD, among successful people. If it's harnessed in the right way it can be hugely powerful, but it can also be a bit difficult to live with sometimes.”