AkzoNobel’s Jemma Lampkin on leadership, talent management and DEI

Jemma Lampkin just celebrated her ten-year anniversary with AkzoNobel. Originally from New York, she’s currently based in Amsterdam as the global commercial director for yacht coatings at the company.

She first came onto MIN‘s radar when she spoke at Metstrade about AI and how she’d utilised it to unpick results from an employee sentiment survey (AI collated themes from 30,000 people in the blink of an eye) and then added her thoughts on what leadership should look like.

Here she sits down with MIN to detail how AkzoNobel challenges its employees’ talents, the current threats to diversity, and what it’s like being a woman in the marine sector.

“AkzoNobel is a company that collaborates,” Lampkin says. “We have collaboration and working together as key qualities. They’re behaviours that have been in the company for a long time.

“In the yacht business [the division she’s currently in] we want to lift people up and lead by example where we can, and give people an engaging and exciting place to work.”

Unlike some, Lampkin can unpick what she means by the statements above, though she is careful to note that she speaks from personal opinion and not for the company overall.

Strengths-based approach to developing management talent in the marine world

Lampkin says she employs a strengths-based approach within her team. That means using StrengthsFinder, a talent testing tool, from Gallup (now called CliftonStrengths). Other leaders have different platforms they might prefer, like Insights Discovery, DISC, etc, she says. “Different teams might be on unique journeys – it’s best to select the right tool for the team rather than force a tool.”

Her philosophy is that it’s not very productive to spend time trying to fix all of someone’s weaknesses, so it’s better to work out what they’re good at.

“It’s more productive and engaging to really focus on your natural strengths. And to use those more actively in your work to do something you are really good at, rather than spend time on something that you’re not.”

Then, as a leader, the focus is on finding opportunities for people to use their strengths. Lampkin says it’s up to all leaders to create growth and development.

“You need to think creatively to find opportunities or trigger them [employees] into a different function, or to move internationally, or to a different business unit. As leaders, it’s important to be on the lookout for how you find new opportunities for your team and encourage them to take the risk.”

Using techniques such as StrengthsFinder makes it easier to find people who have complementary strengths and collaborate.

“In our management team, everyone’s StrengthsFinder results are transparent,” she says.

Lampkin also utilises an external StrengthsFinder coach so the team can discuss and explore their individual results. “The team don’t have a choice, it’s a mandatory action when they go through the process.”

This also helps people become more themselves, which Lampkin is a keen advocate for.

“We spend a lot of time at work, so can you be yourself?” she asks.

“People should be engaged in what they do and truly be themselves at work, and should fully put who they are as a person into what they do. Is it challenging, fun, and do you enjoy what you’re doing?”

AkzoNobel has various prongs to its talent management. It employs a talent philosophy and set of processes/tools consisting of talent assessments, succession planning, and development planning. This includes everything from talent identification (like finding emerging leaders) and talent support (for example, mentoring).

“The talent management programme looks at what resources the talent needs to develop, the kind of opportunities they’re looking for. The needs are very different, and it’s important to understand at an individual level,” she says.

The company also has a graduate scheme, designed to take engineering graduates into leadership roles in its integrated supply chain and recent graduates into commercial roles. Ranging from 18-30 months, it’s around rotating between departments and provides on-the-job training, mentoring, and opportunities to work on diverse assignments.

But, behind all this, MIN readers will be keenly aware that the company is cutting staff.

“AkzoNobel needed to reduce complexity, particularly in its functional roles, to become leaner and more agile,” Lampkin notes. “We aim to reduce our workforce by 2,200 employees globally. Works council consultations are ahead of schedule, and we aim to complete the restructuring by the end of 2025.”

Anti-DEI sentiment doesn’t change anything

While AkzoNobel is engaged with its internal processes across the globe, a significant proportion of its business is in North America (its regional headquarters in Nashville, Tennessee, includes 3,200 employees at more than 30 manufacturing sites, technology labs and business offices) and anything that happens there is under the shadow of the USA government scrapping DEI.

DEI stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion. That’s a framework for promoting fair treatment and participation for all. And it’s one, among hundreds, of Trump’s pet peeves.

Simply put, DEI is a strategy to equalise opportunities for groups of people who are unfairly disadvantaged, and encompasses things such as engaging in broader outreach and recruitment measures and adopting policies that only focus on necessary skills and qualifications. There’s an interesting explainer about what DEI is and the current presidential incumbent’s response by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights (particularly the use of executive orders, which Trump belches out on a daily basis). Attitudes such as dilution of rights or scraping every mention of DEI and gender off the US government’s websites have an insidious way of slipping into the wider conscience. Companies such as IBM, John Deere, Pepsi and JP Morgan Chase have all been cited by Forbes in its depressing timeline of companies walking back polices.

But for Lampkin, it doesn’t change anything.

“I strongly believe in giving all people opportunities, developing people and helping them find new challenges and also being aware of the diversity differences that we do have. I am personally disappointed by some of the things I see happening externally, but that doesn’t change my personal responsibility to others in the company, or to myself as a woman in the industry. For my personal role, for what I do and how I lead, it doesn’t change anything.”

A current advert for a factory-support-chemist’s role reads: ‘… we train and educate on the implications of our Unconscious Bias in order for our TA and hiring managers to be mindful of them and take corrective actions when applicable. In our organisation, all qualified applicants receive consideration for employment without regard to race, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age or disability.’

Marine industry can be closed to outsiders

Lampkin has been historically open about the difficulties she faced when she entered the marine industry. She describes two main themes.

“The industry can be very closed to outsiders. I really wasn’t prepared for how difficult it felt to get people in the industry to take me seriously because I was from outside the industry.”

Now she puts a spin on it. “I always try to see the positive angle and assume positive intention. People in the marine industry are very protective of it [the sector] because they care about it, and they deeply love it. So sometimes reluctance or hesitation to outsiders is driven by the care and protection that people feel for it,” she says.

“Then, of course, there’s the gender issue.” That was a challenge for her from day one in the marine sector. “In the beginning, it was really bad. People said really outrageous things to me, strange things. Like how I got the job and about my physical appearance. It still continues to happen.

“I was really surprised as I came from aviation, which was male-dominated. And I’d been working in Asia, where I was frequently the only woman in the room. But a difference in sex seemed to have a very different response in yachting and the marine sector. That really caught me off-guard, and being off-guard was probably why it felt even more uncomfortable.”

She doesn’t have a positive spin on the gender issue, but it is one of the factors that Lampkin examined in the latest employee sentiment survey (which happens annually). She says there are differences in responses about how men and women feel about AkzoNobel as a place to work. But examination isn’t enough.

Companies need to be able to extract meaning and insights from data. And then: “It’s up to you as a leader, and a team, to do something with the results.

“The most effective implementation is when teams take ownership of the data themselves. It becomes part of action planning – factors to work on. It’s a tool, but you need to do something with it.”

She gives an example of when she joined AkzoNobel’s Yacht division, at a time when the world was emerging from covid lockdowns.

“There were a lot of travel and cost restrictions. People hadn’t been together face-to-face in a really long time. That year one of the themes was missing personal contact. It was a really simple thing to prioritise larger meetings for the next couple of years, getting people back together, team building. It sounds straightforward, but is it that easy to listen, understand and respond?” (During covid, Lampkin learnt to play the piano. She’s now tackling Chopin, recently finishing Raindrop Prelude and now starting Nocturne in G Minor.)

Channelling passion into proactive goals

Another key leadership technique which she advocates is sharing more of yourself, and being vulnerable. “In general, most people don’t want to work for a robot; they want to work with a person and a human being. As leaders, there is a lot of pressure to keep up appearances and to be guarded. More and more, I think it’s really important to share more of yourself.”

This is important whether the company employs 20 or 20,000 people.

“I don’t think it’s that different. Operationally, it is, but how you act and the way you engage with your employees shouldn’t be that different. You want to help people engage and grow.

“Visibility is really important as a leader, [employees] seeing you and your vision. That’s true whether you are trying to reach 30,000 people or ten people. What you execute [zoom or in the room] it will be different but at the core of what you’re doing it’s pretty similar.

“One thing I really appreciate about our current CEO is, if you ask him why he made a certain decision, he will share. He’s very open about it. That visibility and transparency are crucial.

“Our industry is so varied with family businesses up to multi-nationals, but it’s the same emotion and passion. Yacht [Lampkin’s current division] is lovely as it is very emotional, and boating is done for joy.

“I often think about how to get the best out of that passion and emotion. You need to temper it and channel it in the right direction. It’s up to all of us to find the right channel for it.”