|
|
Posted By Clore Social Leadership,
17 October 2019
Updated: 23 October 2020
|
Experienced Leader participant, Ed Tytherleigh, Chief Executive of Stoll, writes about his journey through the programme.
My career in the charity sector began as a volunteer 23 years ago. I absolutely loved that first experience – it was in a Drop-in Centre for homeless people in Manchester. Since then, I have led three charities, and after 13 years’ experience of being a Chief Executive, I now appreciate the importance of continuous learning.
I joined the Experienced Leader Programme to absorb as much knowledge as possible. I already have an MBA, and I wanted to keep learning and challenging myself.
I can safely say, I feel more confident and accomplished after taking part in the programme. It made me step back and look at my own leadership, influence and approach more objectively. I now spend more time discussing my team members’ leadership journeys and have definitely experienced a step change in terms of how I empower those around me.
"I can safely say, I feel more confident and accomplished after taking part in the programme."
One particular theme which resonated with me was that of modern leadership. How it is increasingly about relating to others, about understanding what fulfilment means to them and aligning work to wider personal aspirations.
Effective leadership is so much about being true to yourself, and credible and open with others – it is by its very nature an individual journey. As a result, I would advise anyone starting out to consider which areas of their leadership to focus on. The programme offers a very safe space to explore weaknesses along with strengths, so I would urge them to focus on what is right for them at that time.
"Effective leadership is so much about being true to yourself, and credible and open with others."
This is why I would definitely encourage others to take part in the programme. There is so much to learn and explore. So much so that we each benefited from the programme in our own personal way.
--
The Experienced Leader Programme is a 12-month curated leadership development journey designed for social leaders with 6 or more years' experience, which includes 6 fully-funded places for the Armed Forces Charity sector.
Tags:
casestudy
change
fellow
fellowship
future
skills
Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
|
|
Posted By Clore Social Leadership,
29 January 2018
Updated: 23 October 2020
|
In August 2017 as part of my Clore Social fellowship, I embarked on a four-month sprint with a group of professionals working outside of their day jobs at Marks & Spencer and Unilever to prototype Project Xroads, an intergenerational support network and skills-sharing programme.
Building leaders
The programme was supported by Collectively, who bring together businesses, innovators, activists, facilitators and change makers to explore issues of inequality, and create action plans to address them. As a social sector leader, I wanted to work in the business sector to extend my leadership experience. There was a huge amount of energy and talent in the team - together we grew as leaders as we worked out how change could be achieved.
Multi-generational working
What interested us was the pace of change in the workplace and how it affects people of different ages. People are living and working longer than ever before and today modern offices can house up to four generations.
In the workplace we identified generational differences in digital skills, confidence and legacy. We found a huge opportunity to bring new entry and long career service employees together to exchange life and business skills.
Developing the prototype
We talked to people across the businesses as well as age, youth and volunteering agencies to gain insight on these issues. We spoke to over 200 people through an online survey, face to face interviews and focus groups with long service and new entry employees, learning that 64% of people would be interested in a cross-generation programme.
Our research findings showed that new entry employees would like a safe space to share every day work issues outside of line management discussions. Their workplace challenges include finding information, navigating office politics, and they would like more decision making and presentation skills to help them grow in confidence. They are concerned about the increasing focus on academia to get a job: ‘All that seems to matter is how you do at school - it would be good for people to define success in a different way.’
Long service employees have a desire to share knowledge and benefit others as they felt they could offer support for younger colleagues with self-management. They recognise the pressure of those entering the workforce today to be financially independent. Their workplace challenges include access to technology and worries around financial security and legacy. They would be excited to be part of something new. ‘I'm increasingly concerned with my 'legacy' and whether my work has made a difference’, explained a long service employee.
To pilot the programme, we teamed up employees who had struggled to find work and had already been on a programme to help them enter the workplace, and those who had been in their careers for over 20 years. We found that the digital savvy newer workforce were keen to exchange their skills with experience and a deeper understanding of the business from longer serving colleagues.
Next steps
We want to develop a six-month skills sharing programme with sessions on connection, digital, wellbeing, empowerment, sustainability and community that could be run in every workplace. Our aim is to build solidarity across generations and create platforms for new thinking. Xroads could increase wellbeing at key points across our working lives - it has the potential to initiate a global step change in intergenerational relations. If you are interested in helping develop the programme do get in touch with me via Twitter.
Jane will be talking about perceptions of ageing at an RSA Ideas event on 30 January.
Tags:
casestudy
change
collaboration
fellow
fellowship
skills
Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
|
|
Posted By Clore Social Leadership,
27 September 2017
Updated: 23 October 2020
|
My brain looks like this. It’s wired up to connect - just like yours! Humans live in communities and weave networks throughout their lives. Given that we are wired up to connect I have often wondered why the organisations we create are so siloed, and organised by geography or function with little room for collaboration?
Over the past two years I have been delving deep into practice and theory of networks. They too are wired up to connect, and in today’s global world there is huge potential to find local solutions and tackle global challenges.
I have always believed in the power of grassroots organisations to solve problems. Many years working in international development has compounded my belief that if we can connect and support local organisations, we can power up global change.
The campaign I co-founded almost ten years ago, Age Demands Action, evolved as a network campaign working across 60 countries, and it achieved policy and practical changes at local, national and global levels. Today the networked approach to campaigning is gaining momentum. Books like Harie Hahn’s How organisations develop activists, are inspiring people to find new ways to distribute power across campaigns, and bring together online mobilising techniques with community organising approaches and targeted research.
This made me think; could we adopt a network approach to organisational structures, and what would this involve? What would be the result? If we replace hierarchical structures with more collaborative, flatter networks can we increase innovation and learning? Can we reduce competition between international and local organisations? From my investigation so far I am optimistic.
Here are five thoughts on the process:
- Concentrate on relationships as much as tasks. Listening, facilitation and co-working processes are critical, invest in face to face meetings when you can.
- Devolve decision making and resources. Focus network resources on collaborative projects, develop feedback loops, constantly think about how to support growth rather than act on behalf of others.
- Focus on the cause not the brand. Trust in the creativity of your network.
- Embrace new technology. Start with simple open technical channels i.e. WhatsApp
- Modesty and curiosity are leadership qualities.
As part of my Clore Social Leadership Fellowship, I am doing a secondment with The Social Change Agency. They have created a hub packed full of examples, practical ideas and challenging questions to help you explore your journey towards starting, or transforming to a networked organisation.
In terms of leadership I found June Holley’s table from The Network Weavers Handbook helpful in summarising the distinction between organisational and network leadership:
Organisational Leadership
- Position, authority
- Few leaders
- Leader broadcasts
- Leader tells what to do
- Leader controls
- Small group in the know
- Directive
- Top down
- Leader ensures tasks completed
- Individual
- Evaluation
- Planning
- Provides service
Network Leadership
- Role, behaviour
- Everyone a leader
- Leader engages
- Many people initiate
- Leader facilitates and supports
- Openness & Transparency
- Emergent
- Bottom-up
- Leader helps identify breakthroughs
- Small group
- Reflection
- Innovation and Experimentation
- Supports self-organisation
How do you feel about the distinction between Organisational and Network leadership?
I would love to hear your thoughts. Please share your comments below or connect with me on Twitter.
Tags:
casestudy
collaboration
community
fellow
skills
tips
Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
|
|
Posted By Clore Social Leadership,
01 August 2017
Updated: 22 October 2020
|
This blog was written by a group of 2016 Clore6: Youth Fellows who, as part of the programme, worked on a team challenge around ‘people development’.
Managing people is a huge responsibility, it can be a minefield of processes and overwhelming information, all of which is often shaped by your own experience of being managed.
In undertaking the first Clore6: Youth programme we were set a challenge to address a key leadership issue in the youth sector – people development. How do we get the best out of the most important resource in our sector, our people?
Following a human centred design process, we refined our approach to address that very real fear that many people told us about: when they become a manager for the first time, they just have no idea what’s going on! People shared their stories of taking on the responsibility and not really getting the support they needed, or being sent on a ‘new managers’ training months after having started!
We recognised that charity training budgets are often tight, the range of courses and training can be vast, but that there is a huge amount of knowledge and experience from individuals across the youth sector, as well as online – but knowing what is key is hard.
Having done our initial research, as a team we felt that the focus should be on creating a resource that new managers can have in preparation for taking on management responsibility. However, in the spirit of challenging our approach, we wanted to make something that provided an overview of the concepts that new managers should consider, and then signpost them to useful resources for further information, rather than trying to cover everything in one go.
In our online toolkit we cover some key topics, from having courageous conversations with team members to self-care, building on our experiences of the things we wish we’d known when we started out at managers.
This video provides a brief overview of these crucial topics.
Visit here to sign up to be one of the first to test our curated toolkit for new managers.
We want your help to continue to refine the video, the toolkit, and to reach as many new managers as possible across the youth and wider social sector. Please share your comments and views below, and join the conversation on Twitter.
The team of Fellows who developed this blog and the New to Management toolkit are: Fiona Ellison, Stephanie Papapavlou, Sally Marsh and Sue Burchill.
The next Clore6: Youth programme will take place early 2018 and we are now taking expressions of interest, please email: info@cloresocialleadership.org.uk
Tags:
casestudy
challenges
event
future
research
skills
team
tips
youth
Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
|
|
Posted By Clore Social Leadership,
05 June 2017
Updated: 22 October 2020
|
About halfway through my Clore Social fellowship, shortly before the birth of my third child, this was the phrase I muttered to myself as I posted on a local parents Facebook group about setting up a ‘baby bank’ – where people could donate their great quality, unwanted baby clothes and kit, in order to pass them on to other local families in need.
Little did I know that 18 months on, I’d be running a fully-fledged charity, with two branches, and a third in the pipeline. In our first year, Little Village helped nearly 400 families across Wandsworth and Camden, and we’re on course to more than double that this year. This 4 minute video tells you more about our work and what’s important to us.
Little Village on Vimeo.
Little Village grew, without question, from the things I learnt during my Clore Social journey. I love a good catch-phrase (see: Start by starting) and these are the ones I’ve lived by since launching the charity.
What would you do if you were ten times braver?
This question, posed to us on our first residential, remains one of my favourite provocations. I still ask it every time there’s an important decision to be made about Little Village’s future. Asking this question gives me permission to be authentic. It reminds me that I don’t want to play safe, I want to play true and aim high. It has led to having the difficult conversations rather than brushing them under the carpet. It has given permission for my dreams to breathe, and to guide Little Village’s evolution.
Keep things simple, even when they’re not
One of the things people often say to me about Little Village is “how great, that’s such a simple idea!”. I nod my head while thinking ‘if you only knew the half of it’. I’m someone who loves complexity and has spent most of my career working on abstract concepts in the thinktank world. And yet building Little Village as a practical, approachable, friendly organisation has been one of the great pleasures of this journey. I’ve seen how the simplicity of what we do, underlined by our brand, draws people to us. It’s very powerful.
Harness frustrated female energy
One of the biggest challenges I’ve faced is juggling Little Village with 3 kids under 5. I’ve worked some pretty interesting hours, my kids are definitely better acquainted with CBeebies now than they were, and I’ve pulled in a LOT of granny favours. Little Village is powered by an incredible network of women who are skilled and talented and yet can’t find work that fits with their family life. That’s crazy. We work with the grain of people’s family needs. None of us work more than a 3 day week; some of our volunteers bring their children with them; we offer flexible shifts – and we have access to talent that extends well beyond our core business as a result.
So – start by starting. Putting one step down almost inevitably leads to the next step – so be ready for the consequences, and take great joy from the journey.
Visit Little Village to find out more about their work. Share your comments below, or you can join the conversation with Sophia on Twitter.
Tags:
casestudy
collaboration
fellow
fellowship
future
skills
team
tips
Permalink
| Comments (0)
|
|
Blog Home
All Blogs
RSS