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Posted By Clore Social Leadership,
08 March 2018
Updated: 23 October 2020
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Today is International Women’s Day. A day to celebrate women. A day to reflect on women’s lives, in our communities, our society, our country and across the world. A day to review how far we have come in achieving equality between women and men, and to consider how much further we have to go.
I spent 2016 as a Gender Specialist Fellow, supported by Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, on Clore Social Leadership’s Fellowship Programme. Having worked for twenty years in and around the UK women’s sector, it was an enormous gift to be able to step back and examine the sector with fresh eyes. I have used the year to reflect on women’s position in the UK, how the social sector represents and champions women, where the funding is, where the leadership is, what it looks like and how it is addressing the challenges for gender equality today and in the future.
During the year, a series of unexpected, seismic, often catastrophic events unfolded in the UK and across the world which, taken together, made 2016 a very bad year for women. From an American Presidential Election mired in misogyny to the fetishizing of motherhood in a Conservative leadership contest to the brutal murder by a man of a female MP, to a referendum result which will see the UK leave the EU and potentially jeopardise women’s employment rights to the endless silencing of women on social media who dared to opine on culture, economics, politics or sport. All these events combined show that, in the UK, women are not considered equal to men; that gender equality is not embedded in the way that many had hoped; that a general agreement that gender equality is “a good thing”, is not widely or deeply held in our society, and currently the UK’s women’s sector is too constrained to effectively address this problem.
In my piece, I set out what lessons individuals, organisations, institutions and funders need to urgently learn of last year if there is to be any hope of rebuilding an agreement on gender equality in the UK. I argue that the funders have a vital role in enabling the women’s social sector to contribute to long term thinking about gender equality rather than constantly having to meet short term targets; that there needs to be a greater pooling of knowledge and expertise within the sector to influence and shape broad public policy issues which affect women’s lives alongside the specific areas often categorised as ‘women’s issues’; and that the women’s sector itself needs to refresh its language and reframe the arguments to engage more people in this process.
2016 presented a wake-up call for those of us who care about gender equality in the UK. 2017 isn’t looking much better. In keeping with this year’s International Women’s Day theme, we must ‘be bold for change’ and learn the lessons and take the radical steps required as a matter of urgency.
You can download Rebecca’s full provocation piece here. Please share your views and comments below, or you can contact Rebecca on Twitter.
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Posted By Clore Social Leadership,
29 January 2018
Updated: 23 October 2020
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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.
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Posted By Clore Social Leadership,
27 September 2017
Updated: 23 October 2020
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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.
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Posted By Clore Social Leadership,
03 August 2017
Updated: 22 October 2020
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Clore Social Fellow Baljeet Sandhu has published a report examining if, and how, social purpose organisations in the United Kingdom value lived expertise.
The Value of Lived Experience in Social Change shines a light on the social sector’s attitude towards, and engagement with, so-called service users and beneficiaries. Written as part of Sandhu’s Clore Social Fellowship, it was informed through conversations with eighty social sector leaders in the UK and US and twelve senior staff working in grant-giving and philanthropy.
The report unpicks the structures and implicit biases that reinforce a culture which undervalues the knowledge and expertise of those with lived experience and calls for a fundamental shift in attitudes. It also highlights the huge benefits that developing leaders with lived experience can have, both to social purpose organisations and civil society as a whole.
Calling for a change in attitudes, Sandhu highlights the need for a new style of leadership that is more “proactive, fluid, reflective and equitable… and recognises the vital role all key stakeholders play in the social sector’s ecosystem – including the people we serve”.
“To its detriment, the social sector often fails to recognise, cultivate and harness the insights, knowledge and lived expertise of experts by experience relevant to its work. The sector now broadly understands that lived experience is important, but still thinks of experts by experience primarily as service-users and informants, rather than drivers or leaders of change. There was general agreement that commitment to lived experience in our work is far from universal; that this is an underdeveloped and unsupported area and in dire need of better leadership."
Read the introduction to “The Value of Lived Experience in Social Change” below and access the full report and accompanying website.
This research was inspired by the simple notion that all members of society have the power to create positive social change in the world – including people and communities with direct experience of social or environmental issues our wider social sector seeks to tackle.
Indeed, history illuminates the power of individuals and communities who have worked to solve the social problems they have directly experienced. Consider the women’s rights movement; the civil rights movement; Alcoholics Anonymous; the world’s first safe house for women and children (Refuge), set up by a child survivor of domestic violence; the family from South East London tackling ‘institutional racism’ following the murder of their son, leading to far-reaching police service reforms – and the list goes on.
Throughout my own career in the social sector, I have and continue to be, inspired by the ingenuity, courage, compassion and leadership of ‘experts by experience’ who have ignited, designed and implemented significant social change initiatives on a local, national and global level.
The aim of this report is to explore how, today, the wider social sector currently cultivates, develops and evolves its social impact efforts through the work of such experts by experience, and how it can go further and do better to harness their knowledge and change-making capacity to lead positive social change now and into the future.
The full report.
Get involved in the conversation around "experts by experience" by using #livedexperience and Tweeting us @CloreSocial, or feedback to Baljeet, here.
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Posted By Clore Social Leadership,
01 August 2017
Updated: 22 October 2020
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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
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