Lisa Brown shares how her experience in forensic psychology informs her current work at Confidas People, a specialist boutique consultancy providing people assessment and management due diligence for VC and PE investors.

“So, what do you do?” The small talk I am sure we have all experienced was something I dreaded. When people learn that I worked in forensic psychology, in some of the highest security prisons, interviewing some of the most dangerous and violent criminals in the UK, ears prick up: “I’m sure you have some stories to tell.” I do, but sadly I am not allowed to tell them. People are so interested in that world; they ask what it is like, if I was ever scared, if I was ever in a room by myself with these people. I was. For almost 10 years, my job was to understand what made criminals behave in the way that they did, and to predict how they might behave in the future. 

I absolutely loved my job and experienced things that now don’t seem real when I look back. I negotiated with people who had scaled the walls of the exercise yard, persuading them not to jump. I met lots of pet mice, but only once commented that maybe it wasn’t fair to keep it cooped up in a cage. I received love letters and hate letters. I turned down bribes. I watched a man cry because he didn’t like my new haircut. I learned to always sit closest to the door, don’t wrap your lunch in tin foil, and that a bag for life can be made into a pretty frightening weapon. I learned that the scariest men are usually the most scared. While I learned about people’s crimes and the awful things they had done, I also learned about them; their upbringings, their families. The hope they had that this time around, things would be different. They usually weren’t. 

In my role as a management consultant at Confidas People, I notice a number of similarities between my previous job and my current one. Assessment of people can appear a monumental task, and definitely comes with its challenges, regardless of which sector you are working in. People share similar traits across the two disciplines, particularly when they are in pursuit of achieving something that they really want. Shared traits such as impulsivity, grandiosity, desire to achieve power, and entitlement are common similarities, and years of working with difficult characters have helped me navigate through these in order to gain the information I need, and make useful recommendations.

Ultimately, the key similarity is that understanding people is a difficult but important task. Psychology is labelled a science, but sometimes it doesn’t feel that way. The nature of people means that they are contradictory and unpredictable, but that is also what makes them interesting. I spoke to an experienced client recently who told me that when investments haven’t worked out in the past it has been due to the management teams involved; teams falling out, personality clashes, someone struggling to cope with the stress and pressure associated with aggressive scale. Sound and robust assessment of management teams can help manage this for our clients. 

My experience enables me to provide useful insights that help our clients both to support and influence management teams. We use an evidence-based approach to assessment, and then apply elements of professional judgements, and the diverse experience within our team, gained by assessing hundreds of executives a year, to make practical recommendations to support people to scale with the business. We identify any potential “red flags” or barriers to scale, and provide solutions in order to mitigate risks and remove barriers. Risk assessment and management was crucial to my previous role, and I enjoy employing a similarly evidence-based and practical approach in my work with Confidas People. I also appreciate our outlook; that we can add value to teams and working relationships as businesses scale. 

I am pretty proud to tell people that I hold the record for having talked to more criminals and CEOs than anyone else in the country. I don’t think my style of interaction has changed much, I can be supportive while finding out what I need to know, and deliver clear developmental feedback when the need arises. I still make all decisions and recommendations based on evidence, and understand the value of this to our clients. It’s nice to learn about and support successes, for a change. 

On reflection, how strange it was to walk through a body scanner and collect a personal alarm before I sat down at my desk in the mornings. Interviewing CEOs is (normally) safer than interviewing murderers but, in any case, our tech-enabled approach allows us to conduct the majority of our interviews online, so the need should never arise!