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Posted By Clore Social Leadership,
28 May 2020
Updated: 07 December 2020
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Nick Wright is a leadership coach, organisation development consultant and a Clore Social Action Learning Set Facilitator. In this blog, he writes about the transformational power of the personal leadership touch.
Talk about work with the poor and most vulnerable people in a community, the UK or the world, and the conversation turns quickly to words like strategy, evidence base, programmes, accountability and effectiveness. The underlying assumption is often that big is best, and that the best way to achieve big is to be well-planned and well-organised. After all, big means making a positive difference in more people’s lives, and that has to be good, right? Most beyond-profit organisations with a social purpose focus on some variation of income, influence and impact as their generic goals and indicators of success, with underlying theories of change and strategy maps to support them.
And I’m glad that they do. Imagine, for instance, a UK voluntary sector that worked in a purely ad hoc, spontaneous manner; resulting in e.g. unreliable, patchy availability of health and social care and provision or inequitable access to it. Imagine work that’s purely instinctive and full of energy but unfocused, not thought-through and wasteful of resources. Imagine organisations that are corrupt or abusive, diverting or siphoning off assets away from those in need and penalising those who dare to challenge them. Against this risk-laden backdrop, I’m thankful for those leaders, organisations and institutions that work hard to do the right thing in the right way and to ensure integrity on route.
Yet something is missing, deeply and profoundly missing in all of this. And it really matters. I work alongside a woman in South East Asia from among the poorest of the poor. It’s lockdown and, nevertheless, she ventures out in a makeshift mask to buy food with the little money she has and to distribute it to strangers who are facing near-starvation. In doing so, she risks arrest, contracting the Covid virus, being robbed by the very people she’s trying to help or being viewed by locals as having access to spare cash and, therefore, a target for extortion. She looks at them directly with a warm smile, gives them what she has, tells them earnestly it’s a gift from Jesus and returns quietly home.
"This isn’t a programme and it isn’t a transactional giving out of food. It’s a sacred, personal encounter with each and every person I meet."
Hearing of this and feeling inspired by her example, two organisations contact me to ask if they can assist her with food distribution to the poor. I relay this offer and, yet, she turns it down graciously. I’m curious and I ask her why. She explains, ‘This isn’t a programme and it isn’t a transactional giving out of food. It’s a sacred, personal encounter with each and every person I meet: the poorest of the poor, who otherwise feel helpless, hopeless, invisible and unloved.’ I question her gently on this and ask if she wouldn’t be better saving and using the little money she has for her own family? She looks at me earnestly: ‘How can I eat rice at home, while they outside (the poor) have nothing to eat?’
That, in a nutshell, is the crux of the matter. This woman’s vision, faith and values, deep compassion, burning determination to do what’s right whatever the personal cost, humbles me. I’ve spent my life in leadership roles in UK charities and international non-governmental organisations (NGOs), yet I’ve rarely met anyone who demonstrates such profound personal leadership. I’ve focused on the big picture, strategy, leadership, organisation, culture, effectiveness etc. and in the midst of all this, at times I’ve allowed my heart to grow cold. I’ve permitted myself to stand too far at a distance, to lose sight of the very people, the real encounters, that make this work and life authentic and worthwhile.
I’m rediscovering the transformational power of the personal leadership touch. How about you..?
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Nick Wright is an independent leadership coach and organisation development consultant with over 25 years’ experience with UK charities and international non-governmental organisations. www.nick-wright.com - Nick Wright on LinkedIn.
If you would be interested to read more about the remarkable woman who features in this article, see: ‘A Radical Heart’.

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

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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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