This website uses cookies to store information on your computer. Some of these cookies are used for visitor analysis, others are essential to making our site function properly and improve the user experience. By using this site, you consent to the placement of these cookies. Click Accept to consent and dismiss this message or Deny to leave this website. Read our Privacy Statement for more.
Skills and Development
Blog Home All Blogs

Understanding Leadership: Self-Awareness

Posted By Clore Social Leadership, 05 August 2022



Self-awareness is the ability to see yourself objectively, including your strengths, weaknesses, and preferred leadership style. Self-awareness is developed through a careful and deliberate examination of yourself and how you relate to others.


Self-awareness is the core of the Clore Social Leadership Development Model and the foundation of personal growth. Understanding yourself is key to understanding others, and therefore to generous leadership behaviours. Fundamentally, this means knowing where your strengths and weaknesses lie. In the workplace, this often translates into accepting feedback graciously; understanding and empathising with your team; and being confident in your abilities.

 


Take Hugo and Kate as examples. Hugo is Head of Programmes at his organisation and often attends Trustee Meetings to provide an update on programme activities. For a recent meeting, he asked his direct report Kate to write a monitoring and evaluation report. However, Kate became busy with other projects and failed to provide the report in time for the meeting. How might self-awareness, or a lack of, affect Hugo and Kate’s working relationship in this situation?


Interestingly, researchers have shown that a lack of self-awareness actually leads to an inflated sense of one’s abilities. Many un-self-aware people won’t accept critical feedback; cannot understand others’ perspective; and will take credit for successes whilst blaming others for failures. 


In the example above, Kate lacked the self-awareness to realise that she did not have the time to take on an additional assignment or would need to manage her time in order to make the deadline. If she had, she might have let Hugo know early on that she would need to deprioritise another task in order to complete it.


If Hugo also suffers from a deficit of self-awareness, he might not be able to relate to the pressure Kate was under, and blame her for neglecting to manage her time. He might even throw her under the bus to the Trustees and let them know why they do not have the report.


Research suggests that both internal and external self-awareness is one of the most critical elements of effective leadership. Acknowledging your skills and limitations as a leader enables you to be proactive about self-development and focus on improving your leadership skills.


In addition, having greater self-awareness can lead to stronger relationships with peers, as it increases your listening and communication skills. Self-awareness is also linked to the ability to project thoughts, feelings, desires and other mental states onto others--in other words, being aware of your own mental processes better enables you to empathise with and relate to others.


Let’s return to Hugo and Kate. Upon missing her deadline, Kate could show self-awareness by acknowledging that she made a mistake, why it happened, and how she could avoid making the same mistake in the future. She could also take concrete steps to improve her time management skills, as she has now identified this as a potential area of development.


Hugo, for his part, could try to understand why Kate did not come to him earlier, and what pressure she might be under to finish her tasks on time. He could self-evaluate to see where he could help as a manager, and work with her to improve her communication and time management skills. 


Increased self-awareness is one of the key outcomes of our Emerging Leader programme. Commencing October 2022, the six-month programme is designed to help emerging leaders build their leadership potential, strengthen their networks, and drive social change. If you, or a relevant colleague, are looking to develop your leadership potential then we invite you to find out more about the upcoming programme.


Tags:  casestudy  challenges  change  perspective 

Permalink
 

Coaching on the Leading Beyond Lockdown programme

Posted By Clore Social Leadership, 30 November 2020
Updated: 07 December 2020
As our Leading Beyond Lockdown programme draws to a close, we want to celebrate the participants who have inspired us with their dedication to their development and the causes they work for.

As part of the programme, we have had the pleasure to collaborate with Dr. Jeremy Hinks, Director and Leadership & Development Coach with Alpamayo Coaching Ltd. Inspired by the commitment and diversity of the programme participants, Jeremy writes about his experience with coaching on the programme.

“It was inspirational to speak with these activists and influencers, so committed to their respective causes. Hearing them name their challenges and then being witness as they chose to face them down has been a learning experience for me too.” Dr. Jeremy Hinks

Over the last few months, I have had the privilege to work in partnership with a group of leaders from the social sector, whose diversity, dedication, and commitment to their respective causes was a big inspiration. From the range of social issues they worked for, to their own life experiences and job titles, each participant brought a unique perspective to the table.

Whether they were new to coaching or had experienced it before, they were all excited about what the opportunity might offer to them, particularly aligned with the leadership training, group work, and networking opportunities that collectively made up the Leading Beyond Lockdown programme.

While the participants’ coaching objectives were uniquely individual, they shared a common interest - exploring how they could best fulfil their leadership role at a time when the sustainability of their organisations is threatened by the COVID19 pandemic.

Seeing the bigger picture

Some of our coaching conversations revolved around self-awareness and confidence-building for those who found themselves in new positions, or in old positions made to feel new by the change in relationship dynamics caused by the home working enforced on the majority by COVID19. Others related to more effective communication, decision making, and relationship building that harnessed difference effectively.

The ability to see the bigger picture was central to a lot of conversations. There was a sense that the ability to do so was often drowned out by the volume of work involved in the day-to-day running of the organisation. The importance of self-care was also often lost beneath wave upon wave of ‘doing this, supporting that, and delivering the other’. Bringing the importance of self-care back to the surface and drawing oxygen back into its lungs was a particularly satisfying part of these coaching partnerships.

"Bringing the importance of self-care back to the surface and drawing oxygen back into its lungs was a particularly satisfying part." Dr. Jeremy Hinks
All the coaching partnerships had a ‘whole of life’ aspect which was experienced in two different ways. Firstly, many conversations explored past experiences and reflected on how they were influencing current behaviour. Coachees saw a lot of value in becoming more conscious of their behaviours and feelings and to think about those that were no longer serving them well. Secondly, our conversations often explored how to achieve the balance between their work and out-of-work roles. Of course, this has become more challenging as COVID19 has required us to co-locate all these roles, challenging our ability to maintain the boundaries between them that are so important to our wellbeing.

Building trust and connections online

Forming a relationship built on trust via an online connection proved to be as possible as it is in face to face coaching. After all, we have all grown in our capability to manage the strengths and weaknesses of virtual communication.

It was also interesting how the relationship was influenced by coaching someone in their workspace at home. For example, the occasional presence of children, dogs, cats, deliveries, and unscheduled interruptions from a forgetful partner might have been a distraction. Instead, each interruption afforded an opportunity to learn more about each other and somehow this fostered a helpful level of intimacy not easy to achieve when coaching in an office environment.

Adapting to new uncertainties

As I write this, we have just entered a second period of lockdown in the UK, perhaps ironic given the title of the programme. However, the need to adapt to new uncertainties is a certain part of our future, whether it’s COVID19 lockdowns or an as yet unforeseen challenge.

As I reflect on the value of the coaching in the Leadership Beyond Lockdown I am in no doubt of the general benefits. Simply being on hand to help coachees face their challenges in a supported space where they are not judged, yet feel open to challenge, is of great value to them. It is the coaching equivalent of the ‘Hands. Face. Space.’ narrative which is used to remind us of our individual responsibility in containing the spread of the COVID19 virus.

I already know that each of them leave the coaching partnership with a greater sense of agency and clarity. Past experience suggests that there will be benefits from the coaching that will arise as time passes, benefits that will influence both their personal and professional life.

For me, one of the great aspects of Leading Beyond Lockdown has been the greater reach of the benefits of coaching into social sector organisations. These benefits can only be realised if its availability increases to meet the needs of an ever more diverse community of potential beneficiaries. To sum up, I’ll end with a great comment from one of my coachees on the accessibility of coaching and with thanks to all my coachees for having me work alongside them.

"I have to admit that I've viewed coaching as something similar to regular yoga practice or getting a personal trainer - probably really good for you, but reserved for those with certain privilege that working class me would find inaccessible, and I'm glad to have been proven wrong!" Programme Participant

Tags:  challenges  change  coaching  fellow  fellowskills  programme  resilience  skills  wellbeing 

PermalinkComments (0)
 

Here for your development

Posted By Clore Social Leadership, 30 September 2020
Updated: 07 December 2020

Emily Lomax, Clore Social Fellow and Programme Director for our Emerging Leader Women & Girls and Experienced Leader programmes shares a unique insight into programme delivery and participant experience during the crisis.


It has been eight months since I read the awe-inspiring biographies from the 2020 Women & Girls Emerging Leader cohort and the Experienced Leader cohort. I was lucky enough to have been appointed as their Programme Director to ensure that they achieved, or hopefully exceeded, their learning priorities from the six-month programme.

I was due to meet them all at their first residential in May. As a Clore Social Fellow myself, and long-time facilitator for multiple Clore Social programmes over the years, I knew how much the participants would be looking forward to meeting each other and to forming the bonds which would challenge, inspire and support them not only in the months of the programme but for years to come.

But, as we all know, the World was to turn upside down. Not only was this residential cancelled, the whole viability of the programme was put into question. Would people have the desire or capacity to participate whilst juggling home and work – both envisaged to put them under pressure that we had never seen before. How would people cope and how could the programme fit?

In considering the next steps I frequently reflected on the centre of the Clore Social model – something that has become a mantra for me ever since I did the programme myself, guiding me through difficult decisions as a CEO and then in establishing my own organisation; the importance for social leaders to KNOW YOURSELF, BE YOURSELF AND LOOK AFTER YOURSELF. Now, more than ever, these things felt so important if social sector leaders were to be able to rise to the challenges ahead. Clore Social, in my mind, felt even more important than it ever had done before. These people are the front-line of making sure that social change is a priority and that people stay at the heart of decisions – we had an obligation to support and challenge them.

"Clore Social, in my mind, felt even more important than it ever had done before." Emily Lomax

 

The other thing that was in my head was how this wasn’t our decision alone – the Clore Social model goes on to talk about ‘working with and through others’. We needed to engage them in deciding what to do next. We therefore conducted a survey in early April asking for ideas and for an honest response on whether or not they would want to continue to be part of the programme – with no judgement if the answer was no. 91% of participants on the Women & Girls programme and 64% on the Experienced Leader programme said they wanted to continue and 33% on the Experienced Leader programme decided to defer until 2021.

Delighted that the programmes would go ahead, we now had the daunting task of re-shaping the content to be less dependent on the face-to-face elements, and to try to find ways to bring the magic of Clore Social relationships to life through virtual means. Louise Obi-Drake, Clore Social’s Director of Innovations and Learning, is brilliantly creative and knowledgeable and together we shaped a new way of doing things. The key changes were:

  • Establishing a new programme of e-learning to support participants’ journeys and to help them to feel connected to the programme
  • Re-writing the programme handbook so there was clarity of expectations and timings amidst all the uncertainty
  • Being clear about what could be flexible and co-created, for example, the placement element of the programme is unlikely to be a week of being hosted within an organisation face-to-face
  • Kicking off the action learning and coaching elements of the programme as soon as possible so participants could build relationships and seek space and support
  • Re-shaping the residential into a series of online sessions to be held in May, where possible at the same time as the original residential, to aid planning


"This is the conversation I have been waiting to have all my life." Programme participant

Five months on and I am astounded by how much energy the participants have put into building connections and supporting each other. On a daily basis the programme’s instant messaging channels are buzzing with questions, suggestions, shared inspiration, honest requests for help and sharing when times are tough. These are unique times and participants have responded by stepping up and supporting each other. They have instigated new instant messaging channels to start specific conversations, have attended additional, optional webinars that we have arranged to add additional support and instigated so much supplementary learning.

Last week I asked for some informal feedback and was astounded by the flood of positivity – “This is the conversation I have been waiting to have all my life,” and “I finally feel like a leader.” These people are stepping up and out amidst all the chaos around them in order to make a difference to people’s lives. I am humbled.

They are also incredibly busy and at times struggle to find the space to focus on themselves and on the programme. And that is ok. They, I hope, are learning to be kind to themselves and that one of the joys of the Clore Social programme is that it is self-led and that you create your own path – focusing on the elements that will make the biggest impact for you – it isn’t about pleasing me, it is about what makes the biggest difference for you.

"I finally feel like a leader." Programme participant
 

A few observations of thing that have helped these inspiring leaders during these unstable times:

  • Taking the time to plan
  • Being kind to yourself if things don’t always go according to that plan. Not chucking the plan out at this point, but adapting and evolving – dealing with ambiguity is a really important skill as a social sector leader and this, in itself, is an opportunity for learning
  • Being vulnerable and ask for help
  • Collaboration is key. Ask for shared resources and ideas, no need to spend time reinventing the wheel when you have such an awesome network to draw on
  • Finding ways to fulfil your learning priorities through your day job, and through your home obligations to save time and to connect parts of your life together. We only have one life after all so why not learn whilst being a parent to a reluctant toddler as well as when chairing a board meeting.
  • The Clore Social model is relevant today and every day. Return to it when times are hard.

I am so excited to see what the next few months of the programme will bring and am so grateful to spend virtual time with these inspiring people – I just hope we get to meet each other sometime soon!

----------------------------------

Connect with Emily Lomax on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Tags:  challenges  change  covid  fellow  programme  resilience  skills  tips 

PermalinkComments (0)
 

Innovating for the future

Posted By Clore Social Leadership, 27 April 2020
Updated: 07 December 2020

What happens when a crisis hits and it stops you doing your core activity and you don't know when it can return? Louise Obi-Drake, Managing Director of Clore Social’s National Development Unit shares how we have approached this challenging situation in the hope it might provide some insights for you and to hear what you have been doing to innovate in your organisation.

 

Well, like many of you 23 March was a day to be remembered. It was the day the British Government announced it would be asking anyone who could work from home to do so and would be entering a lockdown. A month on and at the time of writing we are still in the lockdown situation and all mass gatherings have been banned.


This is a problem for Clore Social Leadership as a training provider of programmes that are valued for their transformative face-to-face elements. In the space of a few weeks we have gone from hosting face-to-face events with Covid-19 disclaimers to a complete lockdown and no sight of when venues would reopen.

To set some context, like many training and development organisations our work has cycles and February and March always seem to be months where we start a number of programmes. We had some blended (face-to-face and online) programmes that had started and some due to start. We were in a situation like many people of making decisions with very little information or evidence on which to base them.

We're going to explain how we have approached our challenges using example skills, attitudes and behaviours from our own social leadership capabilities framework.

Courageous Changemaker

At the heart of the courageous changemaker are the skills of identifying solutions to problems, taking calculated risks and taking actions to create foresight about what the future might hold. The attitudes and behaviours include being curious, decisive and responsible.

The courage to pause all operations and take stock of the situation was the most sensible thing we could do. With the information we had and the daily changing situation we had to take decisive action and pause all activity whilst we understood the immediate impact on our organisation and the people we work with who participate in our programmes.

We needed to understand what the future entailed and how we could use this information to innovate for the future. Our approach was human centred and focused on our current programme participants to ensure we could offer them the best experience possible.

Passionate Advocate

We work in social change so being a passionate advocate is all about putting the needs of those you serve at the centre of everyone you serve. For us that meant putting the people on our current programmes at the heart of our decisions and asking them to be honest about what was in their best interest, no matter the outcome.

That looked like we might have to stop running all programmes. We knew this was precisely the time social leaders needed what we offered, the learning, reflection and peer support to deal with the current situation, but we also knew that many of them were under severe pressure and dealing with multiple challenges. It is exactly at times of crisis that the attitudes and behaviours of social leaders are so important, the ability to have a strong moral compass and make decisions that might not be in your own best interest.

"It is exactly at times of crisis that the attitudes and behaviours of social leaders are so important."

Generous Collaborator

The best people for us to collaborate with and decide on the best course of action were, of course, the current people on our programmes. We needed to move quickly but respectfully to understand the best course of action being mindful to not burden them with additional work or decisions. In fact the Covid-19 crisis has enabled us to open up the opportunity to build even more collaboration into our programmes and to work with the participants to co-design elements of the programme and contribute their own knowledge and expertise.

We are at the early stages of this process as we paused the programmes for consultation, but we are excited to be able to build more peer-to-peer learning and even more knowledge sharing from programme participants into our reimagined programme offer. Generous collaborators are focused on building trust, fostering open and honest feedback and inviting inclusive contribution. One outcome we hope is that all our 2020 participants can say that they have been a collaborator and co-creator of their whole experience.

"One outcome we hope is that all our 2020 participants can say that they have been a collaborator and co-creator of their whole experience." 

Empowering Enabler

It's well researched in adult learning theory that the more you enable learners to take responsibility for their own learning and empower them to take on real-world challenges the more likely they are to be motivated to learn and to fully engage in the journey.

We hope the process of building in even more peer-to-peer learning, will in turn create opportunities for the programme participants to be role models to one another, to cultivate an environment where others can excel and foster a growth mindset amongst the whole cohort. We hope to find the cohorts empowering each and every participant to make the most of their experience.

Where will our cohorts be in 2021 if we have been able to further increase the peer-to-peer empowerment amongst our cohorts? It's an exciting question to return to in 2021!
Inspirational Communicator

There's no doubt you will have learned the importance of communication during a crisis. We believe social leaders not only communicate well but they are able to inspire others with their communication. They do this by being authentic, clear, and responsive to their audiences.

Our greatest lesson in the initial stages (based on feedback from our participants) was little, often and specific communication was most helpful. At a time when everyone was dealing with a variety of challenges and we wanted their input we needed to also be agile and responsive whilst sharing all the information we had.

Focused Strategist

This is the one area that many of our participants highlight as the collection of skills, attitudes and behaviours they would like to spend time developing. It's because at the core of a Focused Strategist is delivering on what you set out to achieve, being reflective and continually improving. A Focused Strategist's laser skills are being able to take a vision and turn it into tangible actions and thinking through the most effective way to achieve the goals.

What happens now?

We are entering our phase of being Focused Strategists, making real the courageous visions we have shared with our participants and our hopes of continuing to work with them collaboratively throughout their experiences to co-create their learning journey.

We will share our insights on our research and foresight activity with leaders and providers of training and development for social change so we can be generous in supporting others to make the courageous changes they may need to make. We know that our plans for online learning will need to executed faster than our original strategy to continue to offer development to social leaders at a time when it is needed the most.

We know that in such uncertain times our ability to be agile and respond to the needs of our participants will have to be at the centre of our innovations approach. We will share more details and insights into this.
"Our ability to be agile and respond to the needs of our participants will have to be at the centre of our innovations approach."

Here is some initial feedback from our 2020 Women and Girls Emerging Leaders:

“I just wanted to say a huge thank you for all your hard work and dedication in recrafting the whole Programme and also in providing these additional [online] events. I feel very fortunate to be part of this cohort and take much comfort during these turbulent times knowing that my learning process is being supported so well by all of you at Clore Social.”

“Firstly, thanks so much for all of your efforts to redesign the programme so quickly – no mean feat! ...I have to say that my leadership skills have really been tested in the last few weeks and I already feel that having done some of the Discover work, I have been more confident in decision making and that I have already massively benefitted from the course. For that, I am really grateful! Thanks again for all of your work in this redesign.”


We send our gratitude and appreciation to all of the participants and funders who have been a part of the collaborative problem solving over the past few weeks and who have shared their ideas and visions for the future. We can't wait to restart the journey with them in 2020 with the reimaged leadership development programmes.

Tags:  challenges  change  covid  future  skills  tips 

PermalinkComments (0)
 

February Innovation Prize: How might we make the adoption of digital tools more effective and more fun?

Posted By Clore Social Leadership, 10 February 2020
Updated: 07 December 2020
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.

Tags:  challenges  change  future  joy  skills  tips  values  wellbeing 

PermalinkComments (0)
 
Page 1 of 5
1  |  2  |  3  |  4  |  5