Blog by Louise Drake, Director of Programmes & Leadership Innovation at Clore Social Leadership.

Joy, by definition is ‘a feeling of great pleasure and happiness'. You might be thinking what place does a blog about leadership have to do with joy?

In my opinion, joy is one of the most overlooked areas of leadership development for leaders and the people they lead. I want to convince you to focus on a little bit of joy everyday.

In my role as Director of Programmes and Leadership Innovation, I have the pleasure of working with people enacting their leadership for the benefit of our society’s most disadvantaged and marginalised people. They work tirelessly, often behind the scenes and for most of these leaders life is one lived in a state of survival. And, as you can imagine the concept of joy can be one which is far from their mindset when I meet them.

At Clore Social we use a Leadership Development Model designed by leadership experts that we’ve used consistently for over a decade.. The centre of our model is ‘Know Yourself, Be Yourself, Look After Yourself’ which is the concept we start with on all of our programmes. Within ‘Know Yourself, Be Yourself’ we focus on theories, research and practice from emotional intelligence, emotional agility and authenticity, to name but a few. All of which are rational, have evidence bases and make sense when reflecting on and applying leadership learning.

When we begin to focus on ‘Look After Yourself’ and concepts such as  scepticism, doubt and the physical manifestation of how uncomfortable the theme makes people as they squirm in their seats begins. For people who tirelessly work in the service of others, the thought of dedicating any time to ‘self’ joy and happiness often strikes them as counter-intuitive. I admit that it also goes against commonly held beliefs and images of ‘Leader’ and ‘Leadership’. When was the last time you saw a joyful leader?

Dedicating time to focus on leadership development, for most, feels like a luxury. To add the concept of ‘looking after yourself’ seems extravagant, if not almost decadent. It is not.

As a leader it is your role to be ‘RESPONSE-ABLE’ as well as responsible. RESPONSE-ABLE coined in the book ‘Productivity Ninja’ means ‘to be able to respond’. True leadership happens in times of crisis and times of opportunity. We have all witnessed the rise and subsequent fall of a promising leadership from a crisis that just was not handled in a RESPONSE-ABLE way.

How as a leader are you able to ensure you are RESPONSE-ABLE? One way is to ‘Look after yourself’ physically and mentally. There is a whole host of things that count as looking after yourself, such as getting enough sleep, eating nutritious food and taking regular exercise, however a fundamental thing such as joy and en-joy-ing life can easily be overlooked in the pursuit of achievement and success, especially if what you do at work brings you a sense of purpose and other people’s lives literally depend on you.

I promise by bringing more joy into your life, even if it is small moments of joy everyday, you will feel more motivated, less overwhelmed, more creative and likely to see yourself become more RESPONSE-ABLE. Don’t believe me? Most people don’t until they give it a go.

My challenge, if you choose to accept is to commit to building more joy into your life in the next two weeks and reflect back to see what difference it has made to you, your leadership and those around you.

We all lead such “Helter-Skelter” lifestyles sometimes you just feel that life is passing you by at an alarming rate and you never have time to just stop and reflect on what’s actually going on! Today I was temporarily brought to halt after being asked to chat to British Council’s European Diversity Team at their annual meet-up in Belfast about my leadership journey and what I considered are the traits of “Inclusive Leadership”.

When preparing for my session, and as a recent Clore Social Fellow, my first port of call was to re-look at what underpins the whole Fellowship, their Leadership Development Framework and Social Leaders’ Capabilities Framework. In principle I agree that these are all critical to being an effective leader, but what other traits are needed to be an inclusive leader?

I believe that there are eight key traits, some that overlap with Clore Social, so here are mine;

1. Awareness: Being aware of what is going on around you is essential. But being aware of the people around you is more important. How can you lead if you are not in tune with your colleagues, partners and appreciating the diversity of thinking as well as life?
2. Curiosity: Michael Dell stated that curiosity is the most important trait of inclusive leaders, and a few years ago I read a book by Alan Greenspan the former Head of the US Treasury who set aside one hour every day to read. I’ve tried to follow his lead by setting aside time early in the morning or at night to read, monitor websites and trawl Twitter – yes, my email inbox is overloaded with links to fascinating articles on literally everything, you never know where that next big idea can and will come from.
3. Passion: All I have to say here is – if you’re not passionate about what you do, why do it. I’ve sat on numerous panels and listened to pitches when the presenter is just going through the motions and you just want to scream in a Jerry Maguire voice “PLEASE SHOW ME THE PASSION!” Recently I had the honor of being on the selection panel to interview the next wave of Ashoka Fellows for the UK and Ireland. One of the interviewees was an outstanding guy called Mark Swift with an unbelievable back-story who runs his own social enterprise called Wellbeing Enterprises CIC – truly inspirational and oozing passion!
4. Courage: Without courage, you won’t be able to move forward. It’s not all about being able to take a risk, it’s also about having the courage to defend your colleagues, defending your values admitting when you’re wrong.
5. Collaboration: Here I mean true collaboration and not “glorified cooperation” when organisations pay lip service to each other just to download information and use it for their own means. Trust me over many years of observing our esteemed third sector, and from painful personal experience, I’ve fallen for the “lets collaborate” routine only to find out a few days later that they’ve set up meetings with your partners; what I term death by a thousand cuts culture. Coming from a private sector background you know who your competitors are and you’re always on guard, in the third sector it’s more difficult to work out who your competitors are. A sad reflection on the third sector and if we want to create a truly collaborative environment we need a mix of transparency, trust and inclusive leadership.
6. Values: Don’t think I have to say much more here, to me these are most important traits to becoming an inclusive leader: honesty, trust and a militant transparency. Enough said.
7. Perseverance/Commitment (Never Quit): If values are the most important trait of a highly inclusive leader then perseverance comes a close second. Highly inclusive leaders are fully committed to diversity and inclusion because they align their values to their objectives and persevere no matter what. But like values, perseverance comes from the core - as a boy from the country and a family steeped in traditional farming values, the foundation blocks to everything I do are honesty and integrity, passed down by my parents and grandparents, and with that a determination to not quit come what may. In the world that many of us live in working in social enterprise and social innovation, quitting is not option. As Douglas McArthur once said, “Age wrinkles the body, quitting wrinkles the soul.”
8. Authenticity: Along the same lines as passion, if you can’t be yourself and come across as authentic, other people will see through you.
   

So, thank-you British Council for allowing me to reflect on inclusive leadership and tell my story. On a final action point, never stop learning and set aside that one hour a day to take a breath, find new interesting articles to read and as Clore Social taught me, know yourself, be yourself and look after yourself.

Andreana Drencheva is a Lecturer in Entrepreneurship at the University of Sheffield where she helps social entrepreneurs to develop entrepreneurial and leadership capabilities.

“How am I doing?” and “How can I do better?” are two simple, yet powerful questions for social leaders. Using these two questions to seek feedback from diverse individuals is a fundamental strategy for social leaders. It can help them learn, develop and implement more creative solutions, build communities, and ultimately to create social change. Yet, the evidence shows that not all social leaders seek feedback. If asking these two questions is a simple way for social leaders to grow and develop, why don’t they seek feedback more often? I suggest that it is because seeking feedback presents five personal, professional, and organisational challenges.

1. Seeking feedback can bruise the ego. Like all of us, social leaders have personal egos. While they are often described as heroic figures, they are human beings with personal feelings and identities. As social leaders often pour their hearts and souls into their work, seeking feedback requires putting personal feelings and identities aside to receive developmental, critical, and useful feedback, which is can be negative. Yet this can be difficult because these emotions and identities are what motivates them to do their work in the first place.
2. Seeking feedback requires resources. Seeking feedback takes time, effort, and energy. While it may seem like a simple act, asking for feedback competes for resources with other important activities at work, such as strategy or fundraising, and in their personal lives, such as childcare or quality family time.
3. Seeking feedback can disappoint others. Social leaders recognise that seeking feedback comes with the implicit assumption that the provided feedback will be used in some way. Yet they may not always be in a position to act on their feedback even when they agree with it. This might be due to a lack of resources or institutional and organisational constraints that make it difficult or even impossible to implement specific changes. Thus, instead of giving false hope by seeking feedback, they may choose to refrain from it.
4. Seeking feedback can damage social leaders’ reputation. One of our expectations of social leaders is that they are competent, knowledgeable, and strong individuals. Recognising this assumption, social leaders are sometimes concerned that seeking feedback might portray them in front of others as weak, indecisive, and incompetent. They fear this portrayal might damage their reputation as well as the reputation of their work.
5. Seeking feedback can limit organisational advantages. Seeking feedback often requires at least partial disclosure of information related to ideas, approaches, and methods unique to the work of the social leader. We might think or at least hope that the social sector is guided by ethical decision making. However, there are numerous examples of individuals and organisations appropriating the ideas of social leaders after giving them feedback. Therefore instead of creating opportunities for collaboration and improvement for social leaders, seeking feedback might enhance the competition.

 

How can social leaders address these five challenges? The first step is to recognise the trade-offs between seeking feedback and refraining from seeking feedback; to recognise both the bright and the dark side of seeking feedback. The second step is to make active choices between the trade-offs and to balance the benefits and costs with a long-term view.

Do you agree with these points, or do you have further suggestions on the topic? Please share your views about this blog post below, or contact Andreana on Twitter.