Dianne King


Joined in: 2006

Job title: Head of Group Customer Learning

The recent bHeard survey results that were published in January deemed Dianne King to be the Most Caring, Understanding, and Listening Manager at Advanced. 

Dianne’s management style means going above and beyond to ensure that her colleagues feel adequately supported and engaged in their working environment. We sat down with Di to find out more about her management style.

Most Caring, Understanding and Listening Manager

How would you describe your management style?

First and foremost, I’d never ask any of my team to do anything I wouldn’t be prepared to do myself.

I also pride myself in having a collaborative approach: being the leader of a team, taking their ideas on board, and allowing them to assist in the planning and the execution of everything that we do.  

What’s the best part about being a manager?

The best part about managing people is to see them grow in their careers 100%.

It is to help them, to mentor them, to coach them through their path in Advanced so that they are ready to take that next step and go for that next role that they might be interested in.

How do you keep your team motivated?

A lot of the motivation from our team comes from positive feedback: congratulating them when they’ve done a good job. But also, through constructive feedback as well – maybe just letting them know that if they tried to tweak something slightly; they may get a better result next time.

So, it is about giving that feedback, but also being open to receiving feedback from the team as well: allowing them to have a voice, to have their say, and also encouraging them to collaborate with each other; collaborate with the management team and to work towards our goals together so it’s not a dictatorship, we are working together as a team.

And I think that’s certainly a big motivator for them.

What inspired you to get into management?

It is being able to help people: I get that buzz from seeing something click in our customers; similarly, I get that buzz when I see someone doing a really good job and the fact that I’ve enabled them to do that.

It’s really rewarding to see your team grow and to get feedback from other areas of the business as well that they’re doing a fantastic job, that’s very inspiring, and it gives you great confidence that you’re doing a great job.

How do you ensure that everyone in your team feels well supported?

I guess it’s because we’ve got an open-door policy: in terms of they know that if they need support, all they need to do is ask. We also have regular check-ins; everyone has their 1 to 1 meetings.

In our weekly meetings, we have a round-robin, where we invite everyone to know what’s gone well in the week but also let us know if there have been any challenges or something that they didn’t quite enjoy.

So, it is just inviting that dialogue at every opportunity.

How do you keep your teams energised, and how has this changed because of the pandemic?

My management style has had to adapt throughout the pandemic, especially in lockdown.

I think it was just having that awareness of the fact that some of the team live on their own, or have very limited interactions with others, so we made sure that we had longer regular meetings.

In lockdown, we started a session every Friday afternoon, where we would just get together and play games or we’d do quizzes or whatever it might be.

We did bingo, we’ve done family fortunes, we’ve done catchphrase – all sorts of things just to kind of keep that interaction going.

And I know for some people in the team it was kind of the highlight of their week to be able to come together and just have that team feeling again: to get together and have a bit of fun.

So yeah, we did have to change things up a little bit - but we’ve still got that element of fun that we start our sessions with before we get into the nitty-gritty of the meeting.