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Posted By Clore Social Leadership,
27 September 2017
Updated: 07 December 2020
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David Green is director at Green Pepper Consulting and associate consultant at Action Planning.
Many people don’t trust banks or estate agents but they still use them; most don’t trust politicians, yet they still vote for them. But what about a charity? It needs to be more than good at what it does. It needs to convince funders, partners and the public that it is fundamentally trustworthy. So while good leadership is visionary and inspiring, a social leader also requires an understanding of their organisation’s unique nature and status in civil society.
According to a survey published in March this year, the public believes charities spend around 57% of their income on running costs, when in reality, typical running costs are just 14%. This image problem is of such concern that the National Council for Voluntary Organisations have even set up to explain how charities work.
But earning trust requires more than just a website. Financial integrity and an absence of conflicting interests should come first, but as I’ve argued before, investments should also be ethical. And social leaders need to ensure a level of genuine openness and transparency in dealing with the public which just hasn’t been the case in the sector thus far. Publishing the percentage of income spent on running costs will help. Perhaps too, we should heed the advice of those to also be made more readily available.
Of course, to function, an organisation needs people. So trust in the leadership from staff and volunteers is arguably just as vital as that of donors. As such, leaders should listen to and, above all, value and respect the contributions made by staff and volunteers. This may sound obvious, but to disregard this rather than inspire.
Indeed, leadership is people focused rather than purely organisational. In my experience staff and volunteers will respond when given a voice. So let them help shape how your organisation works and what it becomes. Ask, listen and respond, rather than simply tell. But don’t leave it to the annual away day. Make engaging with, and responding to staff and volunteers, part of your organisation’s culture.
Significantly, social leaders have a level of commitment and authenticity that often can’t be replicated in other sectors. This makes them well placed to promote trust. By being proactive, highlighting values, and demonstrating solidarity with those they are helping, social leaders add value to their message and to their organisation. A good leader will be a great advocate, demonstrating success, as well as being clear about where the money goes.
Trust is not an entitlement, nor should it be disposable. But to lead social change it is certainly a requirement. As the former chief executive of Centrepoint, Anthony Lawton, said to me recently: ‘What would happen if you took away trust? As a leader, you are the face of your organisation. But take away the trust of your team, your beneficiaries or the public, and you will soon be lost.’
Please share your comments about this blog below, or your can join the conversation on Twitter.
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Posted By Clore Social Leadership,
22 August 2017
Updated: 22 October 2020
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This guest blog was written by David Orr, the Chief Executive of the National Housing Federation.
Investing in the talent of our future leaders is vital for growing our organisations. Nobody quite knows what the future will look like but housing associations will no doubt need leaders that are adept in a range of skills.
In the future it will not be enough for organisations to simply provide a service and then step back. It is going to be a much more engaged world where people will be asking questions and expecting answers quickly - our young leaders will therefore need to be strategic thinkers and have a vision for a future that they in their organisations will be trying to craft. They will also need to be technically savvy and digitally aware, to understand the power of social media, and the potential for talking to people that comes from having a whole new range of communication channels.
Having said that, an engagement with the future starts not with technology but with creative thinking. Housing Associations have a clear ambition - to deliver up to 120,000 new homes a year, to be making an offer to people right across all different parts of the housing market – across different geographies and tenures. If we are to end the housing crisis, we need to be in a position to think imaginatively and creatively and be prepared to take some risks. Existing leaders have got where they are by being bold, by putting themselves forward and taking risks. Now we need to create a nurturing environment that makes it essential that young talented people will want to work in our business and want to be creative and bring their ideas to how we create that future.
As a chief executive, leader or a board in any organisation the ability to encourage people to question and challenge you is, at root, a statement of confidence in yourself. If you as a leader are committed to the future you are trying to create then you will want people to be challenging you and asking awkward questions because that's the best way to test your own thinking as well as testing theirs. It should not be an optional extra to be investing in talent - our future depends on housing associations being able to attract, retain and develop talented people.
To do this requires investment in those people. The National Housing Federation’s Young Leaders Experience on 19-20 September, provides a way for housing associations to invest in talent management and develop the skills they need in their future cohort of leaders. The heart of leadership is ultimately about creating and articulating a vision of the future that is better than the present. Young people are just as capable at doing that. They just need confidence and a bit of coaching to get them there.
Register your place for the Young Leaders Experience by visiting here and use the priority code YLE0917CL. Group discounts are also available – book 6 places and get the 7th free. Call 020 7067 1066 or email events@housing.org.uk to find out more.
Tags:
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Posted By Clore Social Leadership,
18 July 2017
Updated: 07 December 2020
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This blog was written jointly by Claire Haigh and Julia Wolfendale from Collaborate Out Loud. Together they create social spaces for public service innovation.
We live in a social world, a world where we are surrounded by technology that allows us to communicate and connect like never before. Successful social leaders are able to authentically and skilfully use not just the digital tools at their fingertips, but to also bring people together to form communities that can make a difference in the places we live.
Making connections across boundaries is key for social leadership. Some of the formal constraints of traditional working literally get in the way. As we move towards widening our social connections across social media platforms, we are seeing the opportunity to include our ‘work allies and work friends’ into our real lives. What would happen if we truly brought our whole selves to work? Perhaps this could help us to transcend the boundaries of hierarchy and formal structures, sidestep silos and really connect around shared interests - inside and outside of work - through shared personal values and interest in mutual outcomes.
Is this a modern workplace dilemma? Have we been busy crafting a work persona that is so different to our real selves that we struggle to let people in and see who we really are, what we care about, and what we have to offer? Do we hold back our potential to connect fully with each other at work because of this? If we are working in public service, is it not important to show we have real lives too? Would this help build our affinity with the people we serve? Would this help develop the authenticity and credibility that is needed in leaders today?
We think so. We have been developing ways to help social leaders connect with who they really are as people first, and then around what skills, knowledge, connections, abilities and interests that they have to offer beyond the role and job description.
People naturally seek connections. We are hardwired to connect, although we might fight it at work and hide behind the work role, finding ourselves segregated in isolation, distanced by a fear of difference. With more transparency and authenticity in public service, we could develop greater empathy and rapport, and connect more wholly with others. We could unlock the potential of people in public services by connecting as people who live in a community who have chosen to serve a community.
Embracing difference, connecting across boundaries, seeking out the unusual suspects and having surprising conversations help us to innovate and collaborate better. If we want to truly innovate we need to collaborate not only with those around us who are our trusted friends, but with those who we don’t know, who are different and are removed from our inner circle. Why not just have a coffee with someone you don’t really know, or follow some new people on Twitter?
Please share your comments below, or join the conversation on Twitter.
Tags:
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Posted By Clore Social Leadership,
07 July 2017
Updated: 07 December 2020
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Increasing awareness of civic duty is a core aim of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation report, Rethinking Relationships: Phase One of the Inquiry into the Civic Role of Arts Organisations.
Society has become fragmented – a lot of the things that used to bring us together don’t exist anymore. We have reached a point in society where our relationship with our phones and technology often subsume our personal relationships, both with each other and within our communities.
But human beings are social creatures. We are hardwired to interact socially with one another, and looking at recent political and societal events, we can all see an upsurge of people coming together. This was clearly demonstrated by the outreach of community support following the London and Manchester terror attacks, and after the fire at Grenfell Tower where we bore witness to the touching efforts of people reaching out in solidarity. People are not waiting for those in positions of authority to take appropriate action, instead they are using their own initiative to carry out their personal civic role.
Gulbenkian is conducting an Inquiry into the civic role of arts organisations. Their new report was developed alongside a panel of leaders, mostly from arts organisations, who provided recommendations as to how social and arts organisations can work together to understand the civic role arts organisations play, and what more is possible.
I am a member of this panel - I joined to add a voice from the social sector, particularly given that the Inquiry is largely focused on arts organisations. There are clear synchronicities in the work of arts and social organisations, but I wanted to understand what more could be done to create a common voice and unify cross-purpose initiatives between and beyond our respective sectors.
I say this because I feel that arts organisations, particularly the publicly funded ones, can do more to support the people in society who need it most. Arts organisations have a vast foothold across the UK in the form of community centres, theatres, libraries, museums, galleries and more, and this gives us amazing opportunities to heal the broken parts of our social fabric. Clearly they can’t do it alone, and collaborations with social leaders are vital. Thank you Gulbenkian, for highlighting some great examples, but let's not believe that these partnerships are common.
The social sector exists to create a fairer society, promote equality and fight social injustice. Yet as evidenced by the aforementioned recent events which brought communities together, what we stand for is not the preserve of the social sector, or any other sector.
It is incumbent upon us all to create deeper connections with one another on personal, organisational, cross-sector and a community-wide level, and this includes debating the issues that really matter.
So today I am asking all Clore fellows and interested parties, from the arts and social sector, to join in the debate. Let us know what you think. How do we get more arts organisations to engage with local charities to maximise our reach, particularly within disadvantaged and poorly served communities? And how do we get more social leaders to offer support, and also challenge other sectors to work together?
Let’s find multiple ways to collaborate, harness solidarity and become more unified in our civic role.
Share you comments below or join the conversation on Twitter.
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Posted By Clore Social Leadership,
28 June 2017
Updated: 07 December 2020
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Vyla L. Rollins is a member of our Board of Trustees and Executive Director at the London Business School's Leadership Institute.
Many individuals, myself included, are still processing the events emerging from Grenfell Tower on 14th June, which has been reported as the deadliest fire in Britain for more than a century. Given the uncertainty already created by other political and terrorist events in the past six months, the Grenfell Tower fire has added to the sorrow, loss and feeling of ambiguity already sinking into the heart and souls of many in the UK, and beyond.
I can remember waking up to Radio 4 at 6am on the morning of the 14th to early reports of a fire in a tower block in North Kensington. As I lay in bed for the next hour and a half, the rolling news reports were stark, fuelled by BBC eyewitness accounts of what was unfolding. Then, over the next 83 hours, stories of the aftermath of the blaze started to emerge. However, in the dark timbre of those reports (amongst which were many accusations and questioning of the paucity of government and local council response) there was one word that resounded for me like a drumbeat. This word, I sense, also helped comfort and give hope to those impacted by the fire at a time of deep despair and loss. The word was ‘volunteers’.
‘Volunteers from the local community.’
‘Volunteers from the Red Cross.’
‘Volunteers from Shelter.’
‘Volunteers from the music, entertainment and sport industries.’
‘Volunteers from the educational sector.’
‘Volunteers from the far reaches of Britain.’
And volunteers from other organisations that many had never heard of. They came forward. And they served. In any way that they could. Shifting. Sorting. Packing. Coordinating. Facilitating. Listening. Comforting. Embracing.
One of my mentors, Ron Heifetz, a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School, describes leadership as, ‘taking responsibility for hard problems beyond having formal or informal authority.’ He goes on to state that leadership is a process of understanding, exchanging information, working together-and that learning is required as part of that process. He also states it is not an easy or glamorous process. It is adaptive; it requires listening, watching and sensing and using the information gained from those activities to inform action. I strongly agree with him and, with this belief, am charged to point out that if you think about it, we were all witnesses to what real leadership looks like on the 14th June, and in the days that followed.
Not necessarily in actions made by those in positions of formal authority (offers of cash into bank accounts, helping to facilitate re-housing, etc.) although I cannot discount these as being helpful. But by the responses of the many volunteers – helping those impacted by this tragedy to claim their cash because many don’t have bank accounts; calming others troubled by being offered housing 200 miles away when their livelihoods and educational institutions for their children are in London; soothing and supporting those still in shock when offered re-housing in another high rise tower too reminiscent of the one that came so close to claiming their lives on the morning of the 14th June.
A cacophony of news stories of grassroots leadership exhibited by volunteers continues to emerge and find their space in the 27/7 news cycle. Many stories linked to individuals who are not in positions of formal authority. Leaders like a woman named Mercy. Mercy, who lives near the Tower, learned that two of her friends died in the fire and yet she still came to help. She said: ‘This is what they would want me to do, be out in the community. I don't want to take the day off, this is where I belong.’ I ask, is that not a mark of true leadership?
It is individuals like Mercy, who possess the spirit and will to serve, that I feel deserves our support and attention. And if other individuals possessing a spirit and will to serve also have the aspiration to equip themselves more formally, to bolster the impact and effectiveness their efforts can have within the community and organisations, then we should be ready to help. Ready to help them become the most effective leaders they can be. I, like my colleagues at Clore Social Leadership, am passionate about supporting and investing in sourcing, creating and delivering leadership development interventions for people in the voluntary and not-for-profit sectors. And the events at Grenfell Tower are one reason why.
I believe social sector leaders are the ones we’ll more than likely need and will increasingly look to in the future, to lead us through some of the most difficult and unprecedented social, community and organisational challenges of the 21st Century. So why wouldn’t you support efforts to develop leaders in the voluntary and not-for-profit sector, in any way that you can?
Please share your views and comments below, or you can join the conversation with Vyla on Twitter.
Tags:
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