|
Posted By Clore Social Leadership,
19 July 2019
Updated: 23 October 2020
|
Blog by Chris Gurney, former Head of Strategy and Research and Experienced Leader Clore Social Fellow
This week sees the launch of Talking Leadership, a new report of qualitative research into leadership development in the social sector. For the research, we interviewed 58 chief executives and senior leaders about leadership development - and I was fortunate to talk to 45 of them. It was a real privilege to spend time with such a wide range of social leaders and I am immensely grateful to those who joined us for the conversations and whose ideas enabled us to create this report.
In particular, I was struck by how those facing the demands of executive and senior leadership were generous in making the time to talk about leadership development. Several expressed a commitment to leadership development that went beyond their organisations and spoke about a responsibility for the wider sector. Such generosity towards others was deeply affirming - and a stark contrast to depictions of the sector as downtrodden, under pressure and lacking capacity to improve.
"Such generosity towards others was deeply affirming - and a stark contrast to depictions of the sector as lacking capacity to improve."
We gained a tremendous amount of insight into this fascinating topic which Shaks Ghosh summarises here. Three additional reflections emerged for me from these conversations. These relate to understanding, impact and collaboration.
Our conversations highlighted diverse understandings of leadership and leadership development. Too often our understanding of leadership development is something done in externally (or internally) provided courses. Such an understanding significantly limits our ability to create opportunities to learn about and experiment with new leadership behaviours in our daily lives. Research on adult learning and development points to the importance of frequent and regular ‘micro-experiments’ for developing and embedding new habits and behaviours. Whilst external courses have an important role to play in improving leadership behaviours, these micro-experiments must also be pursued for learning to be developed and embedded. For us to really make a difference to improving our own leadership, and that of others, we all need to identify and harness such daily opportunities for development.
Our discussions about leadership identified a sense of its value, to individuals, organisations and wider society. At the same time, they also surfaced concerns that these benefits are not well understood or communicated at present. A review of publicly available information from leadership development providers indicates a weakness in terms of the evidence relating to the effects it has for its intended beneficiaries. And practice lags behind that from the private, education and healthcare sectors. Our interviewees discussed a small number of highly regarded leadership development providers, who attract participants largely by word of mouth. Such strong personal recommendations suggest that something must be going right in terms of the quality of provision. However, the limited availability of evidence of impact makes it harder for those seeking to make the case for investment in leadership development (whether to their line manager, Trustees or to a funder). If we are going to create more opportunities for leadership development, particularly paid for programmes, then providers need to be at the forefront of building and communicating the evidence base for impact.
This is work that providers can do together. And this points to my final reflection about the importance of collaboration. Responsibility for leadership development is diffuse and sits with many stakeholders within the system (e.g. individuals, their bosses, the leaders of their organisations, funders etc.). In this complexity, there is no shared understanding of the roles and responsibilities for leadership development.
"The opportunity is there for a sector-wide movement to create innovative, multi-stakeholder leadership development solutions."
Our conversations also surfaced insight about untapped potential within the system and opportunities for improving leadership development that can only be harnessed by working collaboratively. The work of creating system-wide alignment and of harnessing this potential is beyond the scope of any one organisation working in isolation. But the opportunity is there for a sector-wide movement to create innovative, multi-stakeholder leadership development solutions. This will rely on organisations working together to mobilise cross-sector responses - and it will require generosity from leaders across the sector to engage with and contribute to what emerges.
This points to a tension that kept surfacing in the conversations: the sector needs more generous leadership to improve leadership development. At the same time, it needs better leadership development to support more generous leadership.
It is exciting to see that Clore Social will be kicking off an ‘innovation lab’ to explore these issues over the coming months. Creating the space where evidence on leadership development can be brought together with voices from across the sector to design and test new solutions will be of tremendous benefit to the sector. Clore Social can play a vital role in facilitating system-wide challenge and to help mobilise the generosity of others to create the leadership our sector needs. I am delighted to have played a role in kick-starting the debate through this report.
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Attached Files:
Tags:
change
collaboration
fellow
future
opportunity
research
Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
|
Posted By Clore Social Leadership,
12 July 2019
Updated: 19 November 2020
|
By Shaks Ghosh, Chief Executive of Clore Social Leadership
One week from today we will be waking up to the announcement of a new Prime Minister. For months now, every news channel has been fixated on an endless cycle of questions around leadership. We've heard about the crisis of leadership in this country; about how the different models of leadership on offer across the political spectrum point to evidence of an increasingly divided society; and how our assumptions around what constitutes good leadership are being rewritten.
These debates present an interesting challenge to the social sector. What interests me is: what are the parallels for how leadership is perceived in our sector; what role can we play in finding common ground to unite the divisions in our society; and how can we inspire a new generation of leaders who can tackle the social challenges that lie ahead?
Today we have published a new report ‘Talking Leadership: a report of qualitative research into leadership development in the social sector’. Thanks to support from Barrow Cadbury Trust, we were able to speak to over 50 CEOs and senior leaders from charities and other organisations. We wanted to find out their views on leadership in the social sector and what their ideas were for how leadership development could help inspire generous and collaborative social leaders of the future.
They told us emphatically that effective leadership development is essential for creating the skills and relationships needed to address complex social challenges and forge a strong and effective social sector. Our conversations highlighted a belief that leadership development should be available to everyone – and not just those at the top.
"Effective leadership development is essential for creating the skills and relationships needed to address complex social challenges."
In our series of research reports on leadership published in 2016, we identified the three principal barriers to leadership development as: cost, time and confusion. Three years on, it is clear that those same barriers still exist.
Charity leaders told us there is still a great deal of uncertainty about the meaning of leadership and leadership development. The benefits and value of leadership development are poorly understood and articulated, particularly for organisations or their beneficiaries. It is difficult for individuals to understand their leadership development needs, what opportunities exist, or how to access them.
There is concern about how much it costs and the benefit and value it brings. And in these troubled times, and with a growing burden on providing more services for less resource, there is little time for it. It is also particularly difficult for individuals to navigate the wide variety of leadership programmes on offer, and it can be challenging for organisations outside major urban areas to access them.
Despite this context of uncertainty and scarcity, it may surprise you, then, that the overwhelming message that rings out from the interviews is one of abundance. A striking insight arising from our conversations is that there is an abundance of untapped potential for leadership development within the sector. Our interviewees highlighted examples of inspirational leadership development taking place right across the sector. We heard from senior leaders working with ingenuity to develop the leadership capabilities of their teams. In many cases this involves utilising inexpensive and/or free options for leadership development, such as peer learning, mentoring and informal networks or action learning sets - and generously sharing their skills and expertise with others.
"We heard from senior leaders working with ingenuity to develop the leadership capabilities of their teams."
The leaders we spoke to made strong pleas for more accessible leadership development. There is a clear desire to create more opportunities to learn from others through peer-to-peer learning, shadowing and secondments, mentoring and to create dialogue, learning and action on leadership across the sector.
What was particularly striking in the interviews I undertook was just how powerfully and emotively people spoke about their own leadership journeys. The message they told me echoes what I hear time and time again talking to our Clore Social Fellows - of that seminal ‘switch on’ moment when they step into their leadership role and how they can never go back to their old self. To give just one example, one interviewee told us about how her boss tapped her on the shoulder and asked her to be a leader - from that moment she walked taller, her behaviour changed and she took responsibility. How exciting the future looks if we can do that for all our young leaders - and it doesn’t mean a huge investment of time or money.
The message of abundance, for a sector that is so used to thinking about leadership development in the context of scarcity and resource constraints, presents an exciting opportunity for us to take a creative and innovative approach to supporting leadership development.
As a sector, we need to tackle this challenge head-on and explore new ways of developing the millions of leaders that are working within organisations across the sector; help individuals access appropriate development at different stages throughout their careers; and identify opportunities for them to learn from and share their skills with others.
"As a sector, we need to tackle this challenge head-on and explore new ways of developing the millions of leaders working across the sector."
Here at Clore Social we have some exciting new developments which we are looking forward to sharing with you all. We will be developing a new 'innovation lab' to design and test different solutions for supporting leadership development across the sector; identifying ways to harness the untapped potential we’ve identified through this report; and working alongside our colleagues in the sector to help build a generation of inspirational social leaders for the future. I look forward to sharing more with you on this in the coming months.
Read more information about the report and download a copy here.
Download File (PDF)
Tags:
change
culture
future
opportunity
politics
research
Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
|
Posted By Clore Social Leadership,
24 January 2019
Updated: 23 October 2020
|
The recent government Civil Society strategy and Julia Unwin’s Civil Society Futures inquiry have emphasised the increasingly important role that social leaders have in a complex and changing world. For us to meet the challenges of the future, the social sector will need a cadre of resilient, effective and ethical leaders, who can enable the creation and delivery of collective solutions.
In 2019, with support from the Big Lottery Fund and others, Clore Social will be exploring opportunities for growing and promoting social leadership in our sector. At the start of this process we are undertaking a deep dive analysis of leadership development in the social sector. We are seeking to better understand current debates about leadership, to identify the enablers and inhibitors of leadership development and opportunities for improvement.
To inform this analysis we are in the process of speaking to 50 senior leaders from across the sector, and beyond. This sample includes service delivery organisations, leadership development providers, funders, academics and infrastructure bodies. These organisations have been drawn from a range of small, medium and large organisations across the sector.
The responses to our requests for interviews have been very positive and people have been generous with their time. These conversations have demonstrated a real strength of opinion about the importance of leadership development and a desire to be part of the conversation about what might be done to grow and promote social leadership in the future.
We are excited about what these conversations are identifying and how they can contribute to a robust dialogue about the future of leadership in the social sector and the solutions that may emerge.
We will publish the outputs of this analysis as a report in late March 2019. The outputs will inform how Clore Social approaches the challenges related to growing and promoting social leadership in the sector. This will include further dialogue with organisations that share a vision for improving social leadership about what this analysis identifies, what it is missing and about how we can respond as a sector to what is emerging.
To add further to the evidence base, we are interested in hearing from you. We have designed a short survey, which covers the questions we are exploring through our interviews.
We would be grateful if you could spare a few minutes to share your reflections with us. The survey will be open until Friday, 8th February. All the responses will be factored into the findings in our report.

Tags:
change
future
governance
opportunity
politics
research
Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
|
Posted By Clore Social Leadership,
12 December 2017
Updated: 23 October 2020
|
2017 was a groundbreaking year for us.
In June we were awarded a grant of almost half a million from the Big Lottery Fund to be a facilitator for leadership in the sector. We diversified our offer, launching a new series of leadership programmes for 2018 for leaders of all levels. We ran successful events with our partners the House of St Barnabas, expanded our digital footprint with new online-only programmes and offered free online resources for new managers and trustees. And the year is not yet over! This week we announce exciting news about our new HEY100 leadership programme for leaders in Hull and East Yorkshire.
Looking ahead to the New Year, I have no doubt that 2018 will engender an even bigger growth spurt as we strive ahead with our mission to transform social sector leadership by developing skilled and ethical leaders. These are leaders who can meet present-day challenges head-on, who have the foresight to predict future trends along with the agility to maximise opportunities.
At the core of this is our belief that leadership is for everyone. This view is born from conversations we’ve have had with the sector including Fellows and funders, competitors, new leaders, senior leaders and trustees. They all said the same thing: we needed to change how we do things to reach wider audiences, and at the same time maintain our collaborative and ethical stance. This is what makes us unique.
We listened and our relaunched programme offerings are the result of these conversations. This is democratised leadership in action. We actively engage with the sector, listen to leaders, collaborate, digest, and then integrate their feedback to update our programmes and work processes to ensure that what we do is fit for purpose. It is a dynamic and constantly evolving process.
Digital is at the heart of what we do, and how we deliver our innovations. I believe that new technologies augment, rather than supersede person-to-person interactions. Whatever your leadership level, everyone has access to digital, so it serves as a vital route to further scale our leadership offerings.
Coupled with this, additional feedback from the sector also showed a clear need for low-cost and accessible training due to greater demands on people’s time and the strain of dwindling budgets. Our Discover Programme is just one example that serves this need. It’s a four-week online course for new leaders costing just £45. Its popularity, and the uptake of our free online resources, suggests that the sector is ready for more online leadership innovations.
The HEY100 programme is another great example of democratised leadership where digital will be integrated in its delivery. By working closely with local and national funders and organisations in Hull and East Yorkshire, we believe we have created fantastic place-based leadership development offerings that suit the leadership needs of the area, from community leaders to trustees and everything else in-between. This diversified engagement will strengthen the region’s social sector, and we know it’s what they want because they told us. Plus they are delivering the programmes with us.
Our plans for 2018 and beyond are ambitious, but we cannot do this alone. Get in touch and let’s work together because leadership is for everyone.

Tags:
change
chapters
future
opportunity
research
Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
|
Posted By Clore Social Leadership,
26 April 2017
Updated: 22 October 2020
|
We are accustomed to reading reports on the unprecedented challenges facing the NHS and social services, along with the ever present caveat, ‘the increasing ageing population’. Framed in this way the future of health and social care is grim – conjuring images of a dystopia where many of the most vulnerable are forgotten and neglected.
Yet we can absolutely change this. I have had an incredible personal experience of working alongside a community which collaborated with organisations to effectively combat crime, improve the local environment and support each other to learn and build education, careers, health and wellbeing. If this is possible in one disadvantaged community over a few years, surely a healthier, more socially just society with vibrant, caring communities can be built?
The research project I developed as part of my Clore Social Leadership Fellowship has provided me with a golden opportunity to delve more into this question. The main findings were as follows:
Projects carried out in isolation will have limited impact
Firstly the paper explores the concept of wellbeing and how wellbeing is achieved. It then goes on to explore some of the practical ways in which individuals, families and communities can be supported. It argues that projects carried out in isolation will always have limited impact and will not lead to systemic change nor the building of resilience in individuals, families or communities. In other words, doing sophisticated, cutting edge person centred planning with individuals will have limited impact if the family and community with which they live are not able to be inclusive, supportive and enabling. Equally, great community projects are not enough if very vulnerable individuals are not supported. This diagram aims to demonstrate the interdependence of individuals, families, communities and services as well as local and national government.
Bespoke solutions with individuals, families and communities mean getting it right first time thereby reducing waste and costs
Systemic change is rarely achieved because working in silos can be perceived to be easier to comprehend, organise and deliver. This paper aims to show how systemic change can be implemented and shows that it is not a daunting utopian ideal. It also emphasises that rolling out large scale programmes with no regard to local context is an expensive mistake.
We need a greater focus on coproducing social outcomes, based on what matters to people rather than coproducing services
Organisations and institutions focus time and energy on consulting about their strategies and services; in more recent years they have been looking at way to coproduce services. However, this paper argues that more systemic change will be achieved if the focus is on the wellbeing of people and communities rather than services. Services can then be shaped around people and communities in a way that is supportive rather than undermining.
Distributive leadership
Aneurin Bevan said that the ‘purpose of getting power is giving it away’. Supporting people to take a lead in their own lives, their own families and communities is our biggest challenge as we have built a culture of centralised leadership. We have to consciously learn to give power away as leaders of organisations as well as to take more control of our own lives, as citizens.
Taking more placed-based, relational approaches are of fundamental importance if we are to achieve sustainable wellbeing
Finally, the paper sets out the challenge to both the public and voluntary sectors to invest in people and communities whilst reducing unnecessary costs. The recommendations show how:
- The voluntary sector, local and national government can move towards empowering individuals, families and communities simultaneously in a more skilful and adaptable way than ever before.
- Governments can develop a new approach to accountability that enables leadership and innovation at all levels rather than stifling it.
You can download the full provocation piece here. Please share your comments below about this blog and research, or you can join the conversation with Jenny on Twitter.

Tags:
casestudy
challenges
change
collaboration
community
future
opportunity
research
wellbeing
Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
|