From Business Finance to Business Psychologist: Careers in Business Psychology
By Lesley Jennings.
My interest in Psychology initially arose as a result of my upbringing and the life that I led as a young adult. I grew up in a small town on the West Coast of Scotland, where discussions about the human condition were a daily occurrence. At the age of 21, I accepted a role in the Senior Leadership Team of a tourism company, living and working across Europe.
It was my belief that the behaviour of an individual stemmed from the interactions between an individual’s mind, the society they came from and the cultural norms of that society; and to get the best out of employees, a leader should have an awareness of this.
Working in Europe with culturally diverse teams was the best setting to test these assumptions. I later found that the same principles could be adopted and applied to how different departments operate across an organisation.
Moving Into Finance
By the time I entered the finance profession, I had around 30,000 hours of culturally driven psychosocial understanding, which is quite an unusual beginning for a finance professional. I also had the ability to create strong connections, which meant that individuals often felt safe to approach me with concerns.
A few years into my career, I had built a reputation for turning finance into an area which had psychological understanding at the centre, where I operated from three evidence-based viewpoints:
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Numbers aren’t just mathematical; they are also psychological and drive certain behaviours.
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If we want to drive organisations forward in a sustainable manner which preserves value over the long term, we need to be mindful of the behaviours that we are rewarding and what the true cost of these is.
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Enabling motivation is easy when project outcomes are delivering as expected, but unlocking and enabling momentum and resilience during times of struggle is where true high-performance lies.
Shifting Toward Human-Centric Work
My abilities within the human side of the work started getting noticed and I found myself being put forward for human-centric initiatives, building out Business Partnering across organisations, leading HR departments and driving operational change and transformation forward. I found that I thrived in situations that involved helping others and getting the best out of them.
Six months later, I changed the culture of an organisation where there had been hesitancy to speak up. I was told that not only did the CEO like what I had achieved, he also liked how I had gone about it as well. Alongside the psychosocial safety aspect, I had built a strong culture of coaching and mentoring, assessed leadership readiness across the organisation and helped individuals see the need for wellbeing alongside results. Project ownership accelerated, decision making improved and the financial results were significant.
I believed that finance professionals were highly capable and as such, needed autonomy to do their best work. I also believed that organisations, when stripped back, were all just a collection of relationships and the stronger the relationship, the stronger the output. Competence was built by letting project teams and my own team show me what they were truly capable of. This was done by creating monthly competitions to see who could deliver the best results and stepping away to let execution happen, whilst being available for support if needed. Relatedness was achieved by actively listening and testing the view that co-creation generates better results than top-down initiatives.
These principles of autonomy, relatedness and competence will be familiar to Business Psychologists from Self-Determination Theory (Deci & Ryan, 2000). At the time, I was operating purely from evidence I had observed in prior roles. There is no doubt that the awareness I had around human factors propelled me forward in my leadership career. The more I learnt, the more I was called upon to advise.
Across my career to date, applying psychological concepts to organisational decision making and helping others to do the same has secured close to £250 million in capital.
Stepping Into Business Psychology
Completely by chance, I came across an ABP event online and due to my interest in the strong outcomes that psychologically driven awareness can bring to organisations, I signed up.
A few months later, I applied for my MSc in Business Psychology as I could see how this additional knowledge would complement my existing work in creating sustainable, high-performing organisations. Alongside my MSc, I am currently writing a book which touches on the importance of bringing psychological awareness to financial decision making, which I hope to publish next year.
I now advise organisations through two lenses: the commerciality of strategic finance, and deep understanding of the human condition. My work in these areas to date has proved to me that financial and psychological knowledge are not separate ideals, they are both deeply interlinked and should always be part of modern organisational strategy.
Interested in pivoting toward Business Psychology?
- Learn more about joining The Association for Business Psychology.
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About the Author
Lesley Jennings is a senior finance executive who leverages 14 years of experience pioneering human-centric financial and operational frameworks that help organisations unlock and preserve corporate value. By deliberately aligning financial environments with human behaviour, she bridges the gap between cultural dynamics and fiscal performance, consistently driving substantial returns across organisations of all sizes and maturity levels. An expert in institutional value preservation and long term-strategic growth, Lesley has proven that when organisational environments consider human needs, financial resilience and profitability naturally follow. You can connect with her on LinkedIn, where she explores the latest research on effective finance leadership and corporate value creation, and shows how to turn insights into action.