Interviews

Finding your purpose: Leadership interview with Jim O’Keeffe, former Managing Director of Retail Banking, AIB

By Business & Finance

19 December 2024

Pictured: Jim O’Keefe, formerly AIB. Picture by Shane O’Neill, Coalesce.

Jim O’Keeffe, former Managing Director of Retail Banking, AIB, speaks with Sarah Freeman about life after the job and how the best leaders are equipped to have difficult conversations.

This article was originally published in Business & Finance magazine vol. 60, annual review 2024. To read the latest issue, click here.

“I took over retail banking at the end of 2019, just before COVID finished up in June of last year. So I was there for about four years. I’ve always been passionate about the jobs I’ve held. I’d get up at 6am and work hard all day but the job never defined me. Afterwards, an awful lot of people asked me if I missed being MD and I just didn’t.”

The way O’Keeffe saw it, when he sat down with his family, including three daughters in their twenties, and friends, he wasn’t there because of his status in business.

“I did the job, and the team did it really, really well. We brought it to new heights and then I just felt there was an opportunity there for me to move on and to see if I could do something completely new.”

O’Keeffe says he’s a great believer in coaches and mentors and, over the years, he’s spent quite a bit of time working on purpose and what motivates him.

“For me, things like problem solving, innovation, understanding, realising potential in people and businesses was what really drove me. I’m delighted to see people doing exceptionally well, but I’m especially delighted to see people who may not have been cutting it for some time come good.”

One thing you need to be good at is celebrating good news.

His interest in coaching and helping led to a qualification in teaching and, when he moved onto a career in banking, he brought with him the mindset of curiosity rather than judgement.

“I’m not quick to write people off. I would have a fairly positive outlook.”

This attitude, he says, helps in terms of overcoming hard times.

“One thing you need to be good at is celebrating good news. You need to be able to taste success so that when you’re in a darker moment, you know what success feels like and that you can go back to it. It’s not possible to just talk ourselves out of feelings. You have to be able to taste that success.”

Also, he cautions, an ability to hear bad news is key to resilience.

“You have to have that muscle of being able to put it in perspective, be able to deal with it and not panic. And for me, the curiosity for solving a problem, seeing if we could reduce the impact, all these elements, were part of building resilience.”

A characteristic of good leadership, according to O’Keeffe, is backing your people.

“If your leaders are not backing you, you can feel very undermined. So resilience can be difficult in that situation. So, as leaders, we can put the platform in for resilience because, by backing the people, we’re saying to them, ‘do whatever you need to do to get through this patch, we have your back.’”

With his background in teaching, IT and banking and an innate interest in human nature, O’Keeffe has gravitated towards coaching.

“With the AI revolution, there’s a real danger that the distribution of resources will move away from the charity world and the NGOs who may require the support.”

Entrepreneurship

Simply wanting to be a good leader is not enough, says O’Keeffe. You need to surround yourself with the right quality team so that you’ve confidence in them and can back them.

“You need to be a good judge of character, and know that you’re not creating an echo. So the people sitting around the table must have a different view in life. So the diversity comes through whether it’s gender, sexual orientation, it’s essential that you have a group of people who do not all think the same way.”

A harder skill to master but one which is key to effective leadership is the ability to have difficult conversations.

“Everyone should ask themselves, how would I rate myself, out of ten, at having difficult one-to-one conversations? Because that’s the secret to handling people we might term as difficult; people that need strong feedback or direction.”

Looking to the future, it’s clear O’Keeffe has found his purpose.

“Our obsession should not be worrying about the wealth that we pass on to the next generation. Our obsession should be that we pass a place on in a better way than we found it.”