Yahoo Finance My first boss: Clare Mackintosh, police officer turned best-selling author
The people who helped shape leaders
Clare Mackintosh, 46, is a British author and former police officer. She has sold more than two million copies of her books worldwide, including her number one bestseller I Let You Go.
When I joined the police from university on the graduate fast-track programme, my first boss pulled me to one side, and told me I wasn’t better than anyone here and not to get above my station just because I was a graduate. "I will be looking for ways to fail you," was the gist and it wasn’t a brilliant start.
I did 12 years in the police. I moved around a lot and worked in departments for months on end. I got promoted and some bosses stick in my mind more than others. The one who had the most influence was my boss for about a year. Karin Williams-Cuss was a member of police staff as opposed to an officer and I still think of her sometimes.
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I was a sergeant at the time and looking at future promotions. I worked incredibly hard – it was before my children were born and it meant I could devote as much time and energy as I wanted to work.
Karin thought about personal and professional development and work-life balance. In one of my reviews, she talked about the hours I put in and I was half expecting this to be seen in a positive light.
She told me the impression I was making, and the impact I was having on younger officers who were looking at me as a role model. The impression that I might have been giving was that in order to get on and be successful in this job, you needed to be sending late emails, working on days off and responding to things incredibly quickly.
An inspiring leader doesn't just impress their bosses, she said, they need to remember that their team is looking up to them.
From that moment it really changed how I behaved and when I then got promoted again to inspector and working with a bigger team, I was so much more conscious of what I said, how much work I did and, once I had children, I was open about saying that I wouldn’t be available as much due to having a family.
Before I was thinking more up than down as opposed to being a role model, what I had to do in order to progress and how my senior officers might view me. I wasn’t thinking that there might be women in the police force who were looking at other women and trying to emulate them.
I don’t know why I wasn’t thinking like that, as I was desperately looking around for senior female role models. I found very few and Karin was one of those inspirational bosses. I remember feeling relieved when I met her. It felt like a gift for a boss who was committed to developing their team.
Within the team we felt comfortable talking about pressures – there were other departments where it might be seen as a weakness to talk about a difficult day – while she had empathy and people skills that I responded to.
There are certainly more female leaders now and when I left the police, in 2011, a very senior officer was scathing about my choice to take a career break, but I knew I had to get my priorities back in order as I was giving my family only the leftovers.
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She said that she had tried ‘the school gate’ once, that I would be bored rigid and asked what could be done to lure me back. I remember thinking that this senior leader could have done with some of the interpersonal skills I had experienced under Karin. As it was, I signed a two-book deal just before I was due back to the police.
Over the years I have learned how to structure, manage pace and tension and when to bring in reveals and twists in my books.
With the police you really are a storyteller and it is an extraordinarily apt playground for writing novels. Although you are dealing with fact not fiction, you are pulling together the threads of a story – what the CCTV and forensics are telling you, and what suspects are saying – and your job is to wrap it all up into a compelling story and present it to an audience. They are your judge and jury.
That coupled with the fact you're meeting people from all walks of life and often ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary situations, which is very much what my books are about.
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We need to keep the curation element of independent bookshops. That independence isn’t about the business itself, it’s about those recommendations that you aren’t going to get from a chain, who are deciding the bestsellers from head office.
You’re getting a genuine book lover who knows their local community well enough to know what’s going to appeal. I love to see the different bestsellers in different areas which really reflects the tastes of those booksellers and communities.
As part of Independent Bookshop Week, Clare Mackintosh will be in conversation with Rev Richard Coles on 19 June, organised by Linghams Booksellers in Heswall, Wirral. A Game of Lies by Clare Mackintosh is published by Sphere on 22 July.
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