Leading Pets at Home with CEO - Peter Pritchard

In this weeks episode John & Rachael are joined by Group CEO of Pets at Home, Peter Pritchard. It has been an extraordinary last 18 months for so many of us, typified by more people than ever becoming pet owners, so we had so many questions for Peter.

As a first time CEO listen to how Peter approached the challenge of wanting to be an exceptional good leader, helped by experienced CEO’s who were so generous with their time.

We talk to Peter about leading pets at home through the global pandemic and how he and his senior leadership approached this challenge in a unique way that results in them thriving through a crisis.

Drawing on Peter’s considerable experience in retail, which he prefers to call “satisfying the customer” find out about what his leadership team considered to be their priorities, and how they devolved responsibility through the organisation. 

He has some interesting things to say about how they supported their people through the Covid crisis, which provides a wonderful insight into pets at home's organisational and cultural ethos.

He shares his very personal story of “coming out,” and how everyone can have that moment “to be themselves,” and the huge respect people get for their courage, and how he finds that people can associate with others, by being genuine and normal.

Peter’s Leadership Essentials: (01:08:40)

1. Bring the real you to work. It helps you form great relationships with people because they can see your imperfections, because they trust you.

2. Be supportive and realistic. It’s important as a leader that you can use your judgement: when to back people, when to allow people to fail safely, helping them learn important lessons. 

3. Be really kind. Allow people to have their crisis, support them by investing in their emotional back account.