Timestamps

00:00: Introduction with Nick Bent, CEO at upReach

01:27: Nick Bent’s CEO Shell Shedding moment: mistakes

06:42: How do you approach getting the right people around you for the hard moments

13:29: Resetting culture at upReach

16:59: One piece of learning advice from Nick Bent

19:04: Closing remarks

Interview Transcription

Sarah Ellis: Nick, thank you so much for joining us on the Squiggly Careers podcast today.

Nick Bent: Hi, Sarah. I'm absolutely delighted to be here. Thank you for having me.

Sarah Ellis: So this is part of our special CEO Shell Shedding Moments series. I have to say that I have to practise that a few times to make sure I say that right. And I wonder if we could start with you just introducing your role, who you are and what you do so that everybody's kind of up to speed before we dive straight into that shell shedding moment.

Nick Bent: With pleasure, yes. So I'm Nick Bent. I'm the CEO of UpReach. I'm celebrating my third anniversary in the job at the start of 2026. I joined in January 2023. I absolutely love it. At UpReach, we do some incredible work on social mobility. I've got an amazing staff team and UpReach is one of the leading social mobility charities in the UK. And our specific mission at UpReach is to support undergraduate students from very disadvantaged backgrounds, working class backgrounds, low income backgrounds, and help them on their career journey while they're at university so they can get amazing graduate jobs when they finish their degree.

Sarah Ellis: Okay, great. So I think every CEO job is challenging, but I think being a CEO in the charity sector at the moment is probably particularly challenging. We know there's lots of challenges around funding and uncertainty and ambiguity though. Those are words that we hear all across the world. So, reflecting on you and the kind of the job that you do, what's a shell shedding moment that you have had in your role as a CEO where things felt really hard, where you perhaps felt vulnerable? We often describe how when the lobster does lose its hard shell, it honestly looks jelly. Like, you know, you can almost see that. It's like, oh, it's just got this moment of feeling really uncomfortable. It's energy zapping. But ultimately it's better because of it. It grows back bigger and stronger. But that, that shell shedding moment is really tough and it's easy for us from the outside in for me to look at you. And I was obviously I was doing my research beforehand and you just think, wow, Nick's so impressive, he must be brilliant and everything must go swimmingly all of the time. So, I mean, if that is true, this is going to be very short, but hopefully you have got a shell shedding moment to share with us.

Nick Bent: I do. There's a plenty, actually. So some of the shell shedding moments for me and my senior leadership team have been around resetting the culture at UpReach. So there was just a more supportive and inclusive culture for our team doing some major overhauls and investment in, in our technology. I mean in particular, a shell shedding moment for, for me usually involves technology because I'm not very good at technology. I had one just before Christmas. In fact, my final Zoom call of 2025 was quite an important call. It was with senior person at one of our key partners. He was doing a handover to a new colleague. So the new person was going to lead on the relationship with UpReach. And for some reason this, my laptop was glitching. They couldn't hear what I was saying properly. It was, it was just disastrous and it was really embarrassing and I just felt like an idiot and I mean they were very nice about it, but it was pretty embarrassing for me and I hate messing up like that because I feel like I'm letting the team down, letting the organisation down. Anyway, I was able to rescue it eventually and send nice follow up emails and so on. But yeah, something that felt out of my control at a crucial moment was really unpleasant.

Sarah Ellis: We sometimes talk about, you know, everybody has mistake moments. Sometimes those mistake moments are just your own mistake. You know, we are all human and sometimes something out of your control just, just comes your way and you're having to deal with, you know, typically like unanticipated stress and kind of pressure like in, in that moment and as you sort of described it like that, I think we all can viscerally feel what it's, you know, what it's like when technology goes wrong because it sort of happened, happened to all of us. But in general, as a CEO, when you're in those moments, you know, where you, you feel like this is, this is not going well. Whether it's something in your control or out of your control. What helps you, what helps you in that next 24 hours, what helps you to learn rather than repeat those mistakes or hold onto those mistakes? I guess.

Nick Bent: Yeah. I think for me there's this, there's two key things. So one is a sense of purpose and the other is a sense of perspective.

Sarah Ellis: Nice.

Nick Bent: And the purpose really matters because, you know, you should bring everything back to the why anyway. And I tried to do that with the team at UpReach. Now we have this, you know, this big ambitious mission on social mobility. That's why everyone who works at upReach is there and is so dedicated to that cause. But it's sometimes it's good to explicitly remind yourself that, you know, you're in this for the right reasons and you're trying to achieve a really worthwhile purpose. And you know, and that means that, you know, the hard times, the difficult times, the moments where you mess up are still absolutely worth it. And that's just part of normal working life. You know, you just have to acknowledge that sometimes things will go wrong and you have uncomfortable, sometimes painful moment. So that sense of purpose is always, I think, quite restorative. And the sense of perspective also matters because generally what may seem like a horrendous thing to you is probably not that bad. So talk to someone about it, you know, get their perspective on it and they'll probably be thinking, you know, why is he stressing about this? It's not that, that big a deal. They'll be able to offer you a bit of personal support, maybe some ideas, some insights that will help you find, fix whatever it is that's gone wrong or that you've messed up. So I think that, yeah, that sense of purpose, that centre of perspective are really important for getting you through those tricky moments.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, I often reflect on how distance gives you a different kinds of data. You know, when you're in it. Like when you just described, you could really remember and describe that moment I was with this person and that this didn't work. And we were so good at remembering all the details of when things go wrong and often not quite so good at remembering all the details of the things, things that go right because, you know, we move, we all move on, right, you move on to the next thing and you think, oh, well, how do we grow and how do we get better? And I think that's often just, just human nature. Do you have kind of go to people, you know, sometimes CEOs might talk about the importance of things like mentoring or a personal board or perhaps leaders they've worked for before. How do you approach getting the right people around you so that they're there for the hard moments? Because I guess you never know when the shell shedding moments are going to come. But what you probably can guess is that they will happen. You know, like in every job. They're inevitable because of the uncertainty and the ambiguity and having the right people around us kind of feels important. So I was just interested to know how intentional are you about that, like how, how do you make sure you've got those people?

Nick Bent: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I do think that a big part of being able to handle those, those sort of shocks, those setbacks whether you're a CEO or anyone else in the professional world is down to your social capital. Sort of how much social capital have you got professionally? How strong is your network of people that you can draw on for advice and support? We all have sort of concentric circles of people around us, whether it's family and friends, people at work that we work with particularly closely. You know, who you've got a trusted relationship with. But sometimes you need to tap into a broader network of people. Maybe you know, somebody who's, who's more experienced and has been through similar challenges before that you happen to, you know, you might have their number from 10 years ago still in your phone, or you connect with them on LinkedIn and you just want to pick their brains or even have a coffee with them. I do. You know, I do seek out opportunities to build my network, particularly of other CEO peers, both within the charity sector and more broadly. So when I've had the chance to do, you know, sort of leadership courses, training sessions that involve my peers, I've always gone for that.

Sarah Ellis: I think for anyone listening, maybe considering, you know, who is in your career community. And also, do you have a range of people? Because actually listening to you, you talked about some things then that were probably a bit more structured. So you'd asked yourself almost like, what do I want to learn, where do I want to learn? And then you've sort of found those kind of peer, peer to peer relationships through those things. But then some of it is more informal from jobs you've done or people you've perhaps worked with. And I think when you have a shell shedding moment, it can feel really lonely and you can feel really isolated. And we also know that loneliness at work is increasing and actually that's not connected to working at home or working in the office, which is everyone's initial assumption. It's actually much more about how connected we feel at work. So do I feel back to your word about kind of purposeful? Do I feel connected to my work? Do I feel like I've got people around me who care and who I could. I mean, no one uses speed dial anymore, but we used to call it your support speed dial. You know, like who's on. When you're having a shell shedding moment, who is on your support speed dial? And if you're at the moment thinking, oh, I'm not sure then that that's okay too, but then that might be a bit of a prompt to start to think about just how do I find some like minded learners I see it in the squiggly careers community. We're running something this week, a big open sprint across the world and anytime someone is getting stuck or has a good idea, they're all sharing it in a WhatsApp group. We're doing nothing. I'm, you know, I'm not, I'm not being useful. But they are being so useful for each other. And just the amount of learning and connection just happening in that group is, is incredible. Sometimes they're fixing fast, sometimes, to your point, they're doing, they're doing a bit of TLC. Sometimes someone's saying, oh, I'm doing this by myself because my organisation isn't very into learning and they're getting a load of love of like, well, don't worry, you can learn with us. And so people are kind of getting the things that they need. And I always think, remember that asking for help is always a sign of strength and never a weakness.

Nick Bent: I completely agree with that. I completely agree with that. So much of this is about the quality of your relationships with other people that really matters. It's always been important. It's still important now. I think it's going to be important as long as human beings are around on this planet. And look, there are some amazing and exciting and sometimes scary things happening in the world of technology, particularly around AI. But if anything, you know, the sort of, the advance of AI into our, into our lives, whether that's working lives, personal lives, makes the human relationships even more important. And I think for young people starting off in their careers or middle leaders or experienced leaders, just remembering that the human relationships are so important is vital. You know, those human centric skills, being a good people person, being a good team player, good communicator, even just, you know, common courtesy, good British manners, whatever, you could be nice to people, whatever you want to call it, it really, really matters and just makes everything that bit easier to deal with in a professional context. I think it's also important to remember that precisely because careers are going to become more and more squiggly over time, you never know when you're going to bump into people again, people that you might work with in the same office, or they might be a customer or a supplier or in a partner organisation, whatever it may be, your paths could cross multiple times and actually the power dynamics could be very different next time around. So, I mean, just one example from, for me, an upReach. So somebody I used to work with in business 25 years ago has just become a trustee of UpReach. So she's now one of my bosses and I think we got on fine, you know, 25 years ago, basically neither of us can remember really, but it seems to that, you know, we had a great working relationship back then and that's just one example of how people that you work with in your professional life could keep popping up again in very different contexts.

Sarah Ellis: Yeah, and I, that has definitely been true for me too. You know, I work in a very different area now to some of the teams and organisations that I've worked in in the past. And yet sometimes someone will pop up on my LinkedIn and say, oh, we love squiggly careers. We listen to your podcast, I remember working for you, and I'll be there thinking, right, like, I wonder, I wonder, I wonder what that experience was like. And usually like you say, you, you could either you can't remember or hopefully it was okay. But I do think, just that note know that that squiggly serendipity is definitely, is definitely a thing.

Nick Bent: Yeah.

Sarah Ellis: You talked about kind of resetting culture at Reach, which is always, that's almost a shell shedding moment for the organisation, rather than not just for kind of you individually, but almost for everyone. And I'm kind of interested to know, like, what helped people through that? Because letting go of a kind of an old culture, kind of figuring out what your new culture looks like is quite a hard task because it's all about what you do, not really about what you say. And it's kind of behaviour change, which we, for anyone who's ever tried to give anything up, is always, we all know is hard. So that was almost like a company shell shedding moment. So what do you think helped everybody? Because that will have felt different for everyone. It probably would have felt uncomfortable. There will have been some tensions, probably some uncomfortable truths that had to be said out loud. If I'm kind of guessing, you know.

Nick Bent: It's a collaborative effort. The culture needs to be understood and owned by everyone in the organisation, regardless of their role or which team or office they work in. So it's collaborative. But, you know, as a CEO, you've got to be intentional in saying that the culture needs some work and we're going to kind of reset it together. You've got to make it clear that you value everyone's voice and input. One of the first things I did as a CEO was to launch a staff survey. There'd never been a staff survey in outreach, an anonymous staff survey. We've repeated every year. And actually that first staff survey gave people on the team an opportunity to vent anonymously. Some of them had some very challenging things to say about, you know, how they'd experienced working life upReach previously. Some people were feeling pretty, you know, kind of battered and bruised and wanted some pretty dramatic change. And it was important that people could say that anonymously, knowing it would be heard and knowing that there'd be no, you know, there'd be no sort of negative consequences from them being so, so, so candid about, about their opinions. So that was a really important part of the process. And yeah, me making a real effort to, to, to, to listen. I, when I came in as a CEO, I said, look, I haven't got any secret plan to sort of shake things up and make lots of changes in the first instance. You know, I want to listen and learn and just, you know, and build on what's good at upReach. But I always say, you know, I want upReach to become one of the very best places in the UK charity sector for people to, to work and to thrive professionally. The big mantra that I always use to sum up the culture at upReach is high performance and high well being. And keeping those two things, you know, in tandem, you know, in creative tension is really important.

Sarah Ellis: That's really interesting and I think it's a good observation that there's no point where you tick the culture box and almost if that's how you see it, you've probably got it wrong, you know, like, oh, we've done that now, culture done. I think the fact that you see it as like a continual commitment and you've kind of got that mantra to keep coming back to, which is a really nice, that's kind of got an and ness about it. I sometimes describe that as like, and agility. It's like two of those things can be true at the same time. You can have high performance and high wellbeing and I think sometimes people see those as trade offs and whereas actually what you've just described, actually no, they're complimentary. You know, we'll all be better because of both of those things. If you were to leave our listeners now with one bit of advice if they want to learn more from the work they do, but in particular if they want to find their way through these shell shedding moments that, that we all have the big ones, the small ones, the ones that maybe sometimes we create our own shell shedding moments because, you know, maybe we, we're a beginner or we choose to do something for the first time in our squiggly careers or sometimes they happen to us and we've got to find our way through. What do you want to leave our listeners with today?

Nick Bent: Yeah, so I think embrace the challenges and see them as, you know, opportunities to learn and grow, but don't do it alone. You know, it's really important to talk to people. You know, talk to people in your workplace. Maybe some of your, you know, some, some of your peers on the senior leadership team, your, your line manager, or just somebody who you really trust in the workplace who might be more of a friend than a direct colleague. So embrace the challenges, but don't do it alone. I think it's always useful to remember that what may seem like a really horrendous problem or really big deal to you is probably not quite as big a deal as you imagine. And also remember that people are generally more charitable and more nice and more supportive than you think they're going to be. So if you open up about a mistake you've made or a dilemma or challenge that you're facing, chances are people are going to be going to be helpful and that's going to make it better rather than making it worse. You know, working life is not like the Thick of It or House of cards where people are looking for you to make a mistake so that they can exploit that and cynically use it against it. In real life, a problem shared is generally a problem halved.

Sarah Ellis: Well, the Thick of It is one of my favourite TV programmes, but I am very glad that that is not my day to day reality. And I think your two points that you've sort of reinforced there on when something goes wrong, remember your purpose and get some perspective. I think that is really going to stick with me. So, Nick, thank you so much for our conversation today. I really appreciate you taking the time to share your insights and your ideas and your experiences with all our listeners. So thank you so much.

Nick Bent: My absolute pleasure. Thank you.