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At HMG Strategy, we speak daily with CIOs, CISOs and business technology executives about visionary global leadership. Business tech leaders need to be able to peer around the corners to help the CEO and board of directors to anticipate what’s coming next, according to HMG Strategy research.

We also live in a world where members of the C-suite are having to address a host of risks each day, including cybersecurity, supply chain, geo-political and economic threats.

HMG Strategy Founder and CEO Hunter Muller recently interviewed Laura Money, EVP, Chief Information and Technology Innovation Officer at Sun Life regarding her views on visionary global leadership, where she sees opportunities for innovation as well as the risk landscape. The following is a condensed version of their discussion.

Hunter Muller: Hello and welcome to the HMG Spotlight. I’m Hunter Muller, Founder and CEO of HMG Strategy. I’m here today with Laura Money. Laura is the EVP, Chief Information and Chief Technology Innovation Officer for Sun Life.

Laura, congratulations on being named as an HMG Global Leadership Institute Large Cap CIO of the Year!

Laura Money: Thank you so much Hunter. It’s a pleasure to be here and thank you for having me.

HM: Laura, you’ve had an amazing career. How would you characterize your leadership style?

LM: I’m a proponent of that servant leader model. I see myself really as an enabler of the team.

I’ve had the great fortune to work in a number of areas in tech. And what that taught me is that I am not going to be the expert in anything and everything. I can’t build every server or write every line of code. So, what I learned to do is ask really good questions and make sure the right teams and people come together to make the right decisions.

It’s really about setting direction for the team, trying to remove barriers and trusting the teams and the experts to make the right decisions.

When I was going to MBA school, I had to write a paper to try to get a scholarship and I did win the scholarship. The thesis at the time was about how leadership styles were changing and that leadership traits that were considered traditionally male and aligned with strong leadership were going to become less important over time. By contrast, traits that were historically considered female traits — such as empathy co-operation, nurturing, supportive negotiation, compromise, empathetic listening — those were going to become more and more important.

I have to say, I think that’s come true 30 years later.

HM: Culture truly matters, and leadership matters more than ever. Let’s click down one more time on your leadership styles that relate to building a high performing team.

LM: I really try to keep an open environment, but one that is so open that people are not afraid to have different points of view and conflict a little bit. As long as you’re respectful and we’re focused on the ideas, and you don’t get personal. Everybody should feel absolutely free to express their point of view and bring different facts to the table.

And I do believe it’s that robust discussion and probably a little bit of conflict that gets us to the right answer at the end.

But you do have to draw some people out. If some folks are a little bit shy, I make sure to give them space. If some folks are little bit more aggressive than others, I try to hold them back a little. I do really try to make sure all the team feels welcome to present a point of view and that we’re not afraid to conflict.

HM: Laura, this seems like a truly enlightened approach to leadership. I love it!

We’re living in such an exciting time of digital innovation and transformation. Where do you see the opportunities?

LM: There’s no doubt about it that we are at the most exciting time that I’ve experienced in my career. Digital and technology is increasingly being used as a competitive advantage.

I’ve been on a digital transformation journey for about four years now and it really started out by building an agile model and modernizing our tech stack. Now, digital is being used to really change the way we interact with clients and help with our clients’ health and wealth journeys is so important. It’s really integral to our client-focused strategy and how we’re advancing to think and act more like a digital company and make a difference in our clients’ lives.

Of course, you can’t go anywhere now and not talk about emerging technology and generative AI, in particular. It’s creating a lot of exciting opportunities for us and others. But it does have to be balanced with proper risk management.

We’re experimenting with GenAI in several ways — looking at how we can help our employees be more productive along with how we can help our clients have better experiences with a human in the loop.

But we haven’t taken the training wheels off yet. We want to make sure that a human is in the loop to make sure that we’re managing the risk properly. So, we’re going to continue to explore the use of GenAI in a safe and secure way that tests and learns. Those agile behaviors are going to provide really important insights. The workforce of the future is going to require different skill sets than today.

HM: How are you addressing the skills gap?

LM: We obviously are trying to provide training to our staff to bring in spot skills where we can. Organizations that can crack that can achieve a competitive advantage.

Unlike many organizations where I’ve worked in the past, I think about 95% of the staff that we have working in technology are Sun Life employees. The other 5% are consultants and contractors. We really do try to build and invest in our own teams to evolve those skills. Of course, that’s not always going to work and that’s where that 5% comes in.

But we’re very discerning where we bring in employees or we bring in folks with skills who aren’t employees. So, I think the training is important.

I think making sure that you’re exposing your own employees to the new technologies is going to be crucial for the future because every company can’t go rent the same folks every time. Investing in our people is the most important thing.

HM: I love what you just said there, Laura.

In 2024 we’re studying global visionary leadership. Why does global matter more than ever now?

LM: Oh, my goodness, Hunter, you’ve hit one of my favorite topics!

Having a global mindset is important in so many ways. I think there’s really two aspects of this that I’m going to bring out. One is that ideas increasingly are coming from all over the world. Our CEO (Kevin Strain) talks about this often. As the rest of the world has caught up, going forward I believe that more ideas will be going from the east to the west.

If you don’t have that global perspective, you’re not going to be able to take advantage of some of the newest thinking.

The other side is the risk factor. As you know, over the past couple of years, the geo-political tensions have just ratcheted up everywhere. From a risk mitigation point of view, you’ve got to be aware of where your competition is coming from and where your adversaries are coming from. And you need to be very attuned to how you are going to protect yourself in this very tense world that we’re all living in.

Laura Money will be a featured speaker at HMG Strategy’s 16^th Annual Boston C-Level Technology Leadership Summit on September 12. To learn more about this summit and to register for it, click here.