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Posted By Clore Social Leadership,
20 March 2020
Updated: 07 December 2020
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With many people now working from home for what is likely to be an extended period of time, leaders will need to adapt how they work and stay connected with their teams. We thought to share some of our favourite tools used on our programmes and a few others that have been suggested by our community.
1. Set up a Slack workspace
You might remember Slack as the tool you used to share ideas with people during Discover. It's a free and really flexible tool that gives you a way of checking in with the team that's less formal than an email. It's super easy to set up and use - just follow their own online guide here.
2. Zoom meetings and breakouts
Zoom is a particularly good video conferencing tool, as it not only allows HD video and sound, but also great features like breakout rooms. The free version is great for small teams but limits video calls to 40 mins - if anything, good motivation to keep your meetings snappy? Check it out here.
3. Hangouts for creativity
Zoom is great for formal meetings, but it can take a fair bit of bandwidth. So for more informal chats, Google hangouts are a great alternative, as you can limit the video quality if your internet is slow, which is really helpful. Here at Clore Social we are using this to have an hour each day for free floating ideas - exactly as we would in the office. Start hanging out.
4. Prioritise with Trello and Asana
There are a few simple project management tools that allow managers to share tasks with their teams and keep track of progress. Two of our favourites are Trello and Asana. Trello is very flexible and lets you and your team develop your own system, while Asana is based around a gant chart system and is perfect for those who like a little bit more structure. More on Asana here and Trello here.
5. Google docs
Google docs is a tool that you've probably heard of and may even have used. It's the perfect thing when you want to work on a document with someone, as you can comment, edit and look at different versions, all from anywhere. One thing to be careful of, however, is your privacy settings - the documents are easy to share but you can easily lose track of who has access. Find out more.
6. Collaborative Spotify playlists
Last but certainly not least! Creating a shared sense of experience when people are all in their own homes can be a challenge. One fun way of doing it is with a Collaborative Spotify Playlist. These playlists let anyone add a song to them, meaning you can create your own office soundtrack. Start collaborating.
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Posted By Clore Social Leadership,
10 February 2020
Updated: 07 December 2020
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Most of us have been there. You are at a meeting and someone shows you an exciting new digital tool. You immediately download it and on your return to your office try and get your colleagues to adopt and use it - promising that it will revolutionise everything you do. Maybe you get a few weeks or even a month out of it, but more often than not people start to gradually revert to the old ways of doing things. Slack messages turn back into emails; Trello boards become post-its and your data dashboard finds its way back into excel.
But does it have to be this way? What’s stopping the take up of these brilliant tools and how do we make it better?
What we want you to do
Over the next three weeks, we want to hear your best ideas on how to make the take up of digital tools more effective and fun. How have you done it in the past? What worked? What didn’t? Don’t worry, your ideas don’t need to be totally thought out, tested or prototyped. We are just looking for those initial thoughts and ideas that have the potential to be great.
Once you’ve got an idea simply go to the Clore Social Forum Facebook group and post it under the topic “Innovation prizes” to share it with the whole community. Or click here to respond via an online form.
As always the best idea will be awarded £200 and will be shared with all the Clore Social community.
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Posted By Clore Social Leadership,
13 January 2020
Updated: 07 December 2020
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January - How might we spark motivation?
We all know that the late winter months can be a difficult time. The excitement of Christmas and New Year are behind us but the days are still short and grey. It can be a time when excitement about work drops and people seem to be just battling through to the spring. So we thought what better time than right now to harness the creativity of our community to think about the challenge of motivation.
So often leaders think of motivation as something to be done to teams. Something that leadership is totally responsible for. Something that comes from the top. But what if we flip this? What if rather than asking how leaders can motivate staff we instead ask how leaders can support staff to find their own motivations - how we spark motivation in others.
What if we think about the tools, processes and even permissions people need to find their motivation? How do we as leaders create these things and what do they look like in real-world settings? This is where you come in.
What we want you to do
Over the next two weeks, we want your best ideas for how we might spark motivation in people. We want to hear about your ideas for techniques, resources, activities or anything else you can think of. Don’t worry your ideas don’t need to be totally thought out, tested or prototyped. We are just looking for those initial thoughts and ideas that have the potential to be great.
Once you’ve got an idea simply go to the Clore Social Forum Facebook group and post it under the topic “Innovation prizes” to share it with the whole community.
As always the best idea will be awarded £200 and will be shared with all the Clore Social community.
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Posted By Clore Social Leadership,
09 December 2019
Updated: 07 December 2020
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How do you keep going after 25 years in one sector? How do you know that you are doing a good job? How do you know what your purpose or ‘deepest work’ is? How do you know your next steps in your career? You join the Clore Social Women and Girls programme and you find out!
The programme inspired and challenged me at a fundamental level; being with women from the sector and learning from others’ experiences was deeply challenging and humbling. The Clore Social programme used a variety of interactive learning methods to draw out our experience. From YouTube clips, inspiring speakers, journal articles, homework, workshops, group exercises, coaching, Action Learning Sets and one-to-ones, aided by an abundance of post-its and sharpies, we trawled through a massive amount of content. It’s demanding and requires you to commit… and to juggle your workload.
However, having completed the course, I will claim several things:
- I am more able and willing to step forward knowing that I will fail. One session by Liz Peters enabled us to take big theatrical bow when we got a silly exercise wrong. I’ve taken this to the office and when I take a ‘failure bow’ I make it good. The message is, ‘It’s ok to make mistakes. It’s ok to get it wrong.’ I’ve learned to ask myself, ‘What will you do about it - wallow or learn?’
- I am still learning to say, ‘YES, AND...’ instead of, ‘YES, BUT…’ as this can be a powerful enabler to the team around me.
- I am more aware of my energy and attention and when I work best. After a one-to-one coaching session with the excellent Pat Joseph, I prioritise diary dates, planning and margins and therefore work to my strengths.
- I have accepted more speaking engagements. Using the power poses that Liz emphasised you’ll find me breathing and standing like Wonder Woman before I speak, imagining amazing women cheering me on.
- I am more aware of the strengths and the issues that women with disabilities face thanks to learning from women in our group.
- I am more aware of a ‘systems thinking’ approach after the session with Jennie McShannon. Asking key questions about the root causes of a problem and how we can work together to bring about change comes more naturally to me. I still need further work on this!
- I am more connected and able to offer and receive support from my cohort. Our Action Learning Set will carry on and the five us will keep learning from each other, thanks to Jane Garnham our fantastic facilitator. I have also taken the bold step of training to be an Action Learning Set Facilitator and I’m booked on the training course. I wouldn’t have done that before. I would have discounted myself.
Leaders face an enormous amount of issues, women in leadership even more so. The problems that I arrived with are still there, yet my perspective has shifted. I am more aware of my own and others’ strengths, our purpose and my ‘deepest work’. As a result, I think I can carry on longer in the resilient yet fragile women’s sector which deals with so much trauma and injustice. I know I’m doing a bloody good job and I want to enable others to know that too – including you! If you have read this far then I hope this is prompting you to apply... to get the dates in the diary… to talk with your Trustees...
Most of all, I’ve learned from all these women I have met. I’d like to think they have rubbed off on me, helped me to emerge and not listen to the ‘imposter voice’ that seeks to stop me before I start. What a dreamy and inspiring space to enter! I can’t recommend it more highly. But give it your all, make the most of it, stay curious, you might just find out your ‘deepest work’ and get some tools to help you be the best version of you, failures and all.
Josephine Knowles is the Co-Director (and Co-Founder) of Beyond the Streets, a charity that works with women facing sexual exploitation - and is the organisation’s only Argentine Tango dancer!
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Posted By Clore Social Leadership,
31 October 2019
Updated: 07 December 2020
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Leaders Now with Ray Lock CBE, chaired by Anna Wright, Naval Families Federation CEO and Clore Social Leadership Fellow
What an honour to hear from such well-respected leaders from the armed forces and service charities sector.
A retired Royal Air Force pilot and commander, Ray Lock imparted key learnings from leading pivotal operations throughout his extensive military career. It however did not stop there. On his retirement from the Royal Air Force as an air vice-marshal in 2012, he joined the Forces in Mind Trust as Chief Executive.
This blend of experience from two quite distinct sectors was eye-opening to say the least. Most of us are all too aware of their associated stereotypes of leadership; the military sector steeped in authority with formal debriefings, versus a charity sector enveloped in collaboration with an informal open-door policy.
Remember, I said, “stereotype”. There is a tendency for military charities to mirror the military sector, and we know that collaboration isn’t always rife in the charity sector.
Discussions were lively and diverse but the emerging theme was hard to miss. Whichever sector, whether dealing with heroic or compassionate leaders, there still remains an uncertainty and sometimes fear of contradicting them.
Prompted by Anna and the audience, questions were discussed around:
- “How can a leader create a culture of listening?”
- “If your leader is not listening, what have you done to overcome that, in the face of a potential crisis?”
- “How do you deal with your leader’s mindset of ‘don’t tell me what I don’t want to hear’ to bring about greater change?”
As Leaders Now offers a safe space for the speaker, chair and audience, I am not at liberty to divulge the valuable insights and stories shared. You’ll have to come to the next event for that gold.
We would like to thank Ray and Anna for offering a rare glimpse into their leadership journeys. Their generous leadership encouraged an atmosphere of vulnerability and openness.
Forces in Mind Trust partner with Clore Social Leadership on the Experienced Leader programme. For more information, please visit this page.
Blog by Nadia Alomar, Clore Social Leadership's Director of Marketing and External Relations.
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