Introduction
A mother walks into a bank with her son, smiling. She walks out with a frown. She never fully explains why. That single afternoon, and the quiet shame she carried out of that branch, became the reason Mahari Hay built a career climbing from a call centre desk to a Director role at Lloyds Banking Group. In this episode of Everyday Leadership, Mahari tells Sope Agbelusi how a moment of rejection became the engine behind a career built on authenticity, direct communication and a refusal to let anyone else in his family feel that same disappointment.
The bank visit that changed everything
Mahari was a young boy when his mother took him to a High Street bank branch on what she called a special Saturday. She hadn't told him why. She was there to open a bank account for him. He watched her conversation with the member of staff shift from a smile to a frown, and the conversation ended sharply. He didn't understand what had happened that day, but he later learned, through overheard conversation with family, that his mother hadn't known the right questions to ask, and nobody in that branch had the empathy or the time to guide her through it.
"Something happens in you when you see the disappointment on your mother's face," Mahari says. "She walks in with a smile and leaves with a frown." That moment became the root of his decision to join a financial institution, climb the ladder, and make sure that when people asked questions about money, they had someone who looked like them to ask.
From architecture dreams to a call centre desk
Mahari's early ambition wasn't finance. Growing up in Kingston, Jamaica, his first dream was to become an architect, a creative path that fit a boy who wanted, as he puts it, to "build a big yard for the family" one day. When his mother moved them to the UK in search of opportunity, that creative instinct didn't disappear, but the path changed.
He entered financial services at the bottom, in a call centre role, a long way from any influence or decision making power. Looking around, he noticed something else: there was no one who looked like him at the level he wanted to reach. "How do you change that narrative?" he says. "You roll up your sleeves and you go do it yourself, and then you begin to bring other people on that journey."
The audacious ask that got him into head office
Seventeen years ago, moving from the call centre into head office was, in his words, the hardest thing he had to do. He spotted an internal advert for a risk analyst role. His background was architecture and graphic design. "What do I know about risk?" he asked himself.
He recognised the hiring manager's name from the advert, and days later overheard someone say that same name in a lunch queue. Mahari walked straight up to him. He was completely honest: no background in risk, but a background in something the team lacked. "You put me in a room and I can sell ice to Eskimos," he told him. The hiring manager's reply has stayed with him since: the technical skills could be taught, but nobody on his team could sell or articulate the message the way Mahari could. That conversation, not a CV, was what moved him from call centre to head office.
Influence over title
Mahari is direct about the difference between the two. "The thing with a title, it comes with prestige, but having the title doesn't give you influence," he says. Influence is a connection you build with people or an audience. Title is authority handed to you. He points to the classic image of a head teacher walking into a room and everyone falling silent out of obligation, compared with a leader people actually lean towards because they want to hear what comes next.
His reasoning is practical, not sentimental. "The numbers will always be the numbers, but if you're looking to change the numbers, you need to connect with people from a heart and mind perspective." People change behaviour when they understand why, and that understanding is built through connection, not rank.
Engage, Excite, Execute: a framework for authentic networking
Asked how he builds relationships with people he doesn't yet know, Mahari shares the three pillars behind his personal brand: Engage, Excite, Execute.
- **Engage** means making someone want to know more about you the moment you interact with them.
- **Excite** means giving them a genuine reason to believe you could add value to whatever they're working on.
- **Execute** means having a clear call to action, and the follow-through to back up what you've said.
He applied this directly when his partner sent him a podcast interview featuring the CEO of a major property development in Jamaica \[CHECK: exact company name and CEO's name are unclear on the audio\]. Instead of just watching and moving on, Mahari sent a short, direct message expressing genuine interest. That single message led to a relationship, and eventually an invitation to speak alongside the Prime Minister of Jamaica at the opening ceremony of the development. "So many times it's that next step that we don't take," he says. "We listen to stuff... but what are you doing with that information?"
From anger to joy
Mahari is candid that the eighteen year climb wasn't smooth. There were times he felt he deserved a promotion or opportunity and watched it go to someone else, and moments where he questioned whether working twice as hard, staying later, coming in earlier, was still not being read as good enough. "It's hard when you feel you deserve something and you get knocked back," he says.
The shift from anger to joy, he explains, wasn't instant. It came from reframing setbacks as a pathway being carved rather than a door being closed, a mindset rooted in his faith. "I choose greatness and I choose joy and I choose positivity," he says, describing it as a daily decision rather than a permanent personality trait.
Priorities: God, family, then everything else
Asked how he manages an executive role, public speaking, mentorship and relationships without dropping anything, Mahari's answer is a strict hierarchy: God, family, then everything else. He credits peace at home with giving him the energy to handle whatever comes through the front door each day.
He's also deliberate about saying no. "I don't overpack," he says, "because what happens is you're trying to do so much that you're doing certain things at fifty per cent, whereas if you cut it down, you're giving one hundred per cent to everything you go for." It's a trade of quantity for depth, choosing fewer commitments so that the people in front of him get the whole of his attention.
Full circle: speaking beside Jamaica's Prime Minister
The episode closes on a moment that captures how far the journey has travelled. Weeks after that single outreach message, Mahari found himself in Jamaica, invited to speak before the Prime Minister at the opening of a major development, having built a genuine relationship with its CEO through nothing more than curiosity and follow-through. "This little ghetto youth from Kingston 13," he says, still visibly moved by the distance between where he started and where he stood that day.
He's careful not to frame the moment as luck. It was the direct result of the same principles running through his whole career: authenticity, communication, and the discipline to follow through on a connection rather than let it go cold.
