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We are wired up to connect

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:

  1. Concentrate on relationships as much as tasks. Listening, facilitation and co-working processes are critical, invest in face to face meetings when you can.
  2. 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.
  3. Focus on the cause not the brand. Trust in the creativity of your network.
  4. Embrace new technology. Start with simple open technical channels i.e. WhatsApp
  5. 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 

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New to Management: Designing a solution to support new managers

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 

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'Start by starting'

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 

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Born leaders: you need to regress to progress

Posted By Clore Social Leadership, 20 March 2017
Updated: 04 December 2020

The leadership industry offers numerous theoretical frameworks and models, ranging from the instructional to the inspirational. The majority of these models are focused on the exogenous – the external factors, and offer up-skilling and progression as a solution to overcoming leadership challenges. But is this enough?


After spending 2016 as a Clore Social Leadership Fellow, I don’t claim to be an expert on the subject, but with the knowledge that I have gained from that intense fellowship year and reflecting on my 15 years of working towards social justice I offer this: leadership should be more about regression than progression.

The chances are we probably once had many of the qualities that would make us a strong leader, but we have lost or forgotten them. Perhaps more concerning, we might have learned not to value them as we should. We need to tap into our inner-child and re-learn the qualities that childhood gifted us, and value them as leadership traits.

Key to this is our curiosity. I’m sure none of our parents expected to give birth to pint-sized Paxman’s but this is what many of them got. 'Do the trees make the wind?', 'Do they close the roads to switch on all the cats eyes?', 'Where is my soul?', and of course, 'Where do babies come from?'. As children we’re naturally curious about the world around us, and less willing to accept things at face value.

The circle of why is a phenomenon that delights curious young minds and frustrates parents in equal measure. Yet at some point we learned to be less curious. 'Why?' Because the very question becomes annoying and it stopped eliciting the responses that we liked.

Research shows that our questioning drops off dramatically after the age of five, suggesting that schools have a role to play here too. I remember from my own experience that school rewarded the children who knew the answer, not asked the best questions, and this pattern of rewarding answers over questions continues into our professional life.

So, what’s stopping us being more curious as adults? Potentially lots of things! Have you ever heard it quipped that there’s 'no such thing as stupid questions, just stupid people'? Asking questions can cause us to be perceived as naive or ill-informed. Asking a question might feed our imposter syndrome, or we could risk letting our demigod masks slip in front of those who we want to see us as strong and all knowing – so they can trust us to lead them.

But without leaders asking why, what if, and how, we stifle our creativity and, at best, are doomed to tweak existing behaviours, programmes and ideas, and at worst repeat the mistakes of the past. If we’re to lead the change that we seek, then it’s critical that we think differently, and maintain a curious approach to everything we do, and everyone we do it with.

I started doing this a few years ago, particularly in relation to who I work with. It’s now habitual for me to be more curious soon after appointment to get to know my new colleagues more closely. I start with two questions. First I ask 'what matters to you?'.

Beyond an interview environment and trying to impress the new boss, I aim to get to know my new colleagues more personally. I talk about what matters to me, and give the example of walking my dogs at lunch times, hoping to give them permission to share what matters to them and how we can fit work in to their life.

I also ask them to tell me about their favourite line-manager (or sometimes their lest favourite – depending how mischievous I'm feeling). This gives me an idea of how they do/don’t like to be managed and supported. This curiosity is simple, but it has had a big impact on my relationships with colleagues and helps me to create an environment in which we can all thrive.

I'm also more curious in circumstances and conversations where I disagree. In the spirit of curiosity, I have become better at listening to understand, rather than listening ready to challenge with my own view.

This blog was developed as part of Mark's 2016 Clore Social Fellowship prgramme and was originally published on Third Force News.

Mark Kelvin is programme director at the Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland and a 2016 Clore Social Fellow.

Tags:  community  curiosity  fellow  research  skills  socialsector  team  tips 

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Difference is the key: reflections from a Fellow

Posted By Clore Social Leadership, 01 July 2016
Updated: 04 December 2020
As I have sat amongst the other 2016 Clore Social Leadership Fellows one thing is for sure, I am not like anyone here. When I began my Fellowship journey, this state of affairs concerned me - we are all supposed to be people who want social change and want to learn how we can be more effective in leading these changes amongst the communities we work with and the social sector in general.

From several of the different tools we have used within the programme to understand our strengths, our styles of working and ‘areas of development’ (apparently we don’t call them weaknesses anymore), I found myself as an outlier. I was one of a handful of reflective thinkers in my learning. This means I like to hear many people’s views before making my mind up on an issue, I don’t like to be rushed into a judgement without having some good facts and it seemed to explain why I don’t particularly like telephone calls where I have to make instant decisions! But looking to the rest of my cohort I saw that the majority of the group were ‘activist learners’, people who want to get up and do things, lots of energy, lots of trying things and not worrying if they don’t work.

We also looked at another tool called the ‘Four Seasons Model’ - which is essentially a less complicated Myers Briggs type test - and I found myself within a smaller group of the ‘Summer’ category. For Summer people their drive, and what gets them up in the morning, is all about people and relationships. Summers generally like balance and harmony in teams, they dislike conflict and like consultative decision-making. Amongst the other Fellows there was a large bunch of ‘Springs’, people who are very creative and love to get new projects off the ground. There was also a good set of ‘Winters’, those who want to get things done who are efficient and take decisions quickly, and each of these seasons obviously have their strengths and weaknesses.

So as these things emerged, and I found myself and my experience to be very different from everyone else's, I had a medium-sized charity existential crisis. I thought to myself, ‘What on earth am I doing working in the charity sector?! I am so different, perhaps I don’t have the right qualities to do this big thing called ‘social change’, and am I failing the Armed Forces communities I work with because I am nothing like any of these other Fellows, Fellows who I admire and am inspired by, and should be more like!’

Yet as I’ve progressed through my Fellowship year, a new perspective is seeping in which has calmed my crisis. If I take nothing else from my time on the Clore Social Leadership programme I will take this: difference is beauty and difference is strength.

Most of my life I have been told to concentrate on the things I am not good at. No doubt this has helped me pass some exams I might have otherwise failed, however this norm has definitely been to the detriment of celebrating what it is that I can do. I have learnt over the Fellowship that ‘positive psychology’ (hear me out) would say to focus on the very things I am good at and to make them excellent. This is because the things we are not very good at we will likely only make mediocre if we try to improve them. Now this doesn’t mean I can just ignore the areas I am uncomfortable with. The lesson however is: understand where you excel, where you don’t and try to put a team around you that is VERY different to you who can fill in the strengths you don’t have.

As I stood on my own at the second residential with the other Fellows playing some active games, we were asked to stand along a scale of 0-5 on what we felt about risk taking. I stood at zero or perhaps 0.1 - the rest of the Fellows stood at least at 3 and many around 5. Previously this difference would have made me feel awful, but that day with the Fellows I felt very important because I realised that this difference could make me invaluable to a team where that trait is not present. It also impresses upon me that in my work life, I need to have people around me who are further up the risk taking scale - if we give ourselves the space to learn from each other, we will be able to pull each other up and down scale to achieve our collective goals.

It may seem like such a small change in perspective as to how I look at myself and others, but it has freed up my mind to embrace what I am good at and stop berating myself for the things I am not. The beauty of Clore Social Leadership is in the diversity of its Fellows. It is all their experiences and skills and life histories that matter. It is the strength found in the difference of where Fellows have worked or currently work, whether grassroots organisations, small and large charities, social enterprises and the private sector. Our difference is how we learn to be better, learn to ally with people that help us to step out of our comfort zones and who challenge us to do more exciting and impactful things for the communities we serve. As the Fellowship moves forward, and new Fellows look to apply for places in 2017, I urge Clore Social Leadership to continue to enable diversity and access to the Fellowship. I finally encourage potential applicants to embrace and bring their difference to the group, because this is the gold dust on which to build success.

Here's a short video of Marie-Louise describing what makes a good leader.

Tags:  culture  difference  environment  event  fellow  reflection  skills 

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