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“I used to be an English teacher” said Baroness Eliza Manningham-Buller to the London Business Forum (LBF). She cuts a steely and imposing figure, one certainly gets the impression that she would take no nonsense. Manningham-Buller, or Eliza as she insisted on being known to her staff, was thanking those delegates who resisted that primary school urge to sit at the back and were brave enough to take the seats at the front of the theatre in the Museum of London.

Before she began, Manningham-Buller explained that she must first issue a “health warning […] I don’t mind what you ask me but I do not promise to answer it.” The Director General of Britain’s Security Service (MI5) from 2002-2007, Manningham-Buller led MI5 in the wake of 9/11. Then the Deputy Head of the Service, she flew out to the US the day after the attacks. She described her “strong memory” of the plumes of smoke that rose through the clouds above New York, revealing to the LBF that it was then she knew she wanted the top job.

Manningham-Buller told the LBF that she never set out to be the head of MI5; her ambition was “to have interesting, rewarding work […] and to do a good job in it.” She was, she said, “a slightly stroppy, rebellious member of staff,” always looking for ways to improve things. Consequently, as a leader, she always welcomed the contributions of junior staff who would challenge the status quo.

The 11th of September 2001 had illustrated the horror that a well organised terrorist plot with suicide bombers could achieve and Manningham-Buller believed that dramatic changes were needed to deal with the threat. When she took over in 2002, MI5 was an organisation of just 1800 people and their job was to protect a British population of 60 million. What was clear was that they “needed to be twice as big with five times the capability” and the government apparently took little convincing to double the security budget.

MI5 were successful in achieving their aim of increasing their capability by five times and Manningham-Buller encountered no resistance from staff. She insists that they had “no problem in taking the staff with us.” Why? Because they had been consulted and helped to devise the answer, they were united by a shared vision and understood the need for change. Manningham-Buller led a programme of substantial change, banishing the belief that if you try to change too much performance drops. “We couldn’t risk our performance dropping,” she stressed, as there was too much at stake.

No part of the organisation, Manningham-Buller said, was protected from reform. Eager to challenge the “totem poles, the things that were sacred,” everything, including the selection process, vetting, training procedures, the way intelligence work was approached and analysed, MI5’s professional standards, and IT was challenged under Manningham-Buller’s leadership.

The recurring message to the LBF was that leaders should never forget the mantra: “Our people are our greatest asset.” Not only should it not be forgotten but it must be central to a leader’s behaviour. Manningham-Buller said she always encouraged her people to “challenge and question,” particularly the new talent who “are often brimful of ideas” and push a leader to continue to challenge themselves and the practices that have become entrenched in an organisation’s culture. She wanted staff, not “people who follow the colonel over the top of the trench.”

Manningham-Buller revealed that she always endeavoured to praise and thank her staff. She couldn’t know everyone, so developed a system to ensure she could write a note to employees who were promoted thanking them for their hard work. This, she insisted, took no time at all but showed her commitment to her staff.

She was keen to emphasise that it is “a dangerous delusion that leaders and managers must treat everybody the same.” People must be treated fairly but it is necessary to realise that everyone is different. “People need different things from leaders and you need to be tuned into that,” she explained. Knowing what different employees expect from you as their leader is crucial to success.

Manningham-Buller insisted that a lot of her insights were just “basic common sense.” There is no leadership template, she said, but every individual needs to work to their own strengths.

Manningham-Buller described a conversation with her 22 year old private secretary who said to her one day: “Eliza you just didn’t handle the Home Secretary well today, you mustn’t keep interrupting him.” Good leaders, she concluded, invite criticism and will admit their errors: “Seek feedback and seek criticism, and when you get it, be appreciative of it. Don’t ever, ever, allow yourself to think you’ve become infallible.”