Carole Layzell: Leadership, Digital Transformation and Creating Your Own Opportunities

The Impact Room Leadership Podcast

Carole Layzell joined Michelle Ansell in The Impact Room to discuss a career spanning more than three decades across banking, customer experience, digital transformation and technology.

From leaving school at 16 and beginning her career in the back office at Barclays to becoming a Managing Director, Carole’s story is one of curiosity, adaptability and deliberately creating opportunities rather than waiting for them.

In this conversation, she explores social mobility, sponsorship and mentoring, the importance of continuing to invest in yourself, leading transformation through people, blending digital and human customer experiences, building meaningful professional networks and moving from Executive leadership into NED and advisory roles.

Watch: Carole Layzell in The Impact Room

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Careers are not always built by moving upwards

One of the most useful themes in Carole’s career is that progression has not always meant taking the next promotion.

She talks about the value of sideways moves, deliberately developing new skills and sometimes moving from a large leadership role into a much smaller remit because of what the experience could teach her.

Her advice is simple: keep developing, remain curious and think about what each opportunity adds to your capability rather than judging it purely by title or status. Carole Layzell and Michelle Ans…

That is a good career message for senior executives too.

The strongest long-term careers are often built through breadth rather than a perfectly linear climb.

Create the opportunities rather than waiting for them

Carole is very clear that sponsorship and mentoring matter but individuals also have responsibility for creating those relationships.

She challenges the idea that a mentor must be formally allocated by an employer. It might be someone outside the organisation, somebody encountered through LinkedIn or simply someone whose experience and perspective you value.

Rather than formally asking someone to “be my mentor”, she suggests starting with a conversation, asking for a coffee and building the relationship naturally. Carole Layzell and Michelle Ans…

And when it comes to sponsorship, she makes an important distinction: tell people who you are, what you are trying to achieve and explicitly give them the opportunity to advocate for you when you are not in the room.

The broader message is:

Career opportunity is not entirely something that happens to you. You can create more of the conditions in which it happens.

Social mobility: don’t allow somebody else’s expectations to become your ceiling

Carole describes being told that her East London accent would hold her back and that, because she had not attended university, she would never become a Director or Managing Director.

She did not accept those assumptions.

Her experience also reflects how expectations around leadership have changed. Organisations increasingly recognise the value of different backgrounds, lived experience and routes into senior leadership rather than assuming there is one conventional path to the top. For someone earlier in their career, the lesson is not that barriers do not exist.

It is that another person’s view of your potential should not automatically become your own.

Invest in yourself, repeatedly

Carole can identify points throughout her career where progress followed a deliberate period of learning.

That does not necessarily mean expensive qualifications.

She talks about conferences, networking, learning from technology vendors, developing knowledge in areas such as AI and cybersecurity, and then bringing that learning back into the organisation and sharing it with others.

There is an important leadership point in that.

Development creates more value when the learning does not stop with the individual.

Carole describes taking what she had learned back to her teams so that their capability improved too.

Her phrase for the responsibility that comes with progression is particularly good:

“Always leave that ladder down.”

She talks about sharing the mistakes, scars and lessons she has accumulated so that others can benefit from them.

Transformation succeeds through people, not plans

Carole describes curiosity, adaptability and resilience as essential when leading change, particularly in legacy organisations where transformation can be exhausting.

Her perspective is that transformation should be viewed as evolution rather than simply disruption, while maintaining a relentless customer lens.

“People don’t follow transformation plans. They follow people they trust.”

It reinforces the same argument from a different perspective: transformation is ultimately a leadership challenge, not simply a programme management challenge.

Digital and human is stronger than digital or human

Carole’s background across banking and technology also gives this episode a good customer and digital dimension.

Her argument is not that technology should replace the human interaction but that technology should amplify it.

Straightforward, transactional activity can increasingly be handled digitally. But customers still need human support during moments involving emotion, vulnerability or complexity whether buying a home, dealing with bereavement, divorce or financial distress.

Her conclusion is very clean:

“It’s not digital or human. It’s digital and human.”

She also challenges organisational silos, arguing for greater collaboration between Customer, Product, Operations, Risk and Compliance and better use of data across those functions.

Your network should not only exist when you need something

Carole has built her network by staying in contact with people when there is no immediate transaction attached.

Sometimes that means a WhatsApp message, coffee or lunch simply to find out how somebody is.

LinkedIn has also played a major role throughout her career. Carole says every job she has had has involved LinkedIn somewhere in the process not through applying to advertised roles, but through people approaching her, making introductions or starting conversations. Carole Layzell and Michelle Ans…

Your network is most valuable when it has been built before you need it.

From Managing Director to NED and Board Advisor

Carole talks about moving away from full-time corporate leadership and towards NED and advisory roles.

Her description of the transition is useful: instead of steering the organisation day to day, she now wants to help organisations set the right course and ensure they remain true to it.

In this episode:

• From leaving school at 16 to becoming a Managing Director
• Social mobility and challenging assumptions about leadership potential
• How to find sponsors and mentors
• Why career progression does not always mean promotion
• Building confidence and creating your own opportunities
• Continuous learning and investing in yourself
• Why leaders should “leave the ladder down”
• Leading digital transformation through people
• Creating customer experiences that combine technology and empathy
• Breaking down functional silos
• Building a network before you need it
• Moving from Executive leadership into NED and advisory roles

What leaders and aspiring executives should take away

Don’t confuse progression with hierarchy.
Sometimes a sideways move adds more to your future leadership capability than the next job title.

Create more opportunity around yourself.
Sponsors, mentors, networks and visibility rarely appear automatically.

Keep investing in your relevance.
Digital capability, AI, cybersecurity and wider commercial understanding increasingly matter regardless of your core function.

Let other people benefit from your experience.
Leadership is not only about progressing yourself. Carole’s “leave the ladder down” principle is a strong reminder of the responsibility senior leaders have to develop others.

Transformation requires trust.
Technology and plans matter, but people ultimately follow leaders they believe in.

Build your network when you don’t need anything.
The strongest professional relationships are rarely purely transactional.

Key quotes

“People don’t follow transformation plans. They follow people they trust.”

“Always leave that ladder down.”

“It’s not digital or human. It’s digital and human.”

About Carole Layzell

Carole Layzell is an experienced financial services, customer and transformation leader whose career has spanned banking and technology organisations including Barclays, Nationwide, Salesforce and Medallia.

Having started her career at 16, she later returned to Barclays as a Managing Director and is now developing the next stage of her career through Non Executive Director and advisory roles. Her experience spans customer centric transformation, digital enablement, operational leadership and organisational change. Carole Layzell and Michelle Ans…

Building the leadership capability for what’s next?

Douglas Jackson works with organisations and senior leaders navigating change, from Executive appointments across Customer, Operations, Transformation, Strategy and Digital through to career and Board advisory support.

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