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Posted By Clore Social Leadership,
13 September 2016
Updated: 07 December 2020
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Dawn Austwick is Chief Executive of Big Lottery Fund.
Anyone interested in the role and nature of leadership will not have been short of food for thought lately. The recent referendum debated at length Britain’s role on the world stage – with both sides keen to paint a picture of leadership either within or without the EU. In that debate, we will rarely have seen a more eclectic array of personalities seeking to burnish their own leadership credentials. And both the Conservatives and Labour have engaged in (albeit very different) internal soul-searching about the leadership they need to tackle the post-Brexit era. Theresa May now leads the country – tasked with bringing the country back together and forging a socially just, economically sound, future. A task not without challenges.
But for all this leadership talk, the referendum laid bare the fact that large numbers of people feel disenfranchised and ignored by the powers-that-be. That’s an immediate challenge, and one that civil society has a key role to play in tackling. At the heart of this is giving people and communities a sense of agency over their lives. Here at the Fund, our new strategic framework sets out what sounds like a simple vision: putting people in the lead in shaping their lives and communities. That means people and communities defining their own aspirations, and organisations (including us) supporting them to achieve it. It’s nicely encapsulated by the phrase ‘nothing about us, without us, is for us’. And, in leadership terms that can be quite a challenge to what we are used to.
So what does great leadership look like in a thriving civil society? There’s a conversation starting to emerge around a concept I am calling ‘generous leadership’. John Donne has it in a nutshell:
"No man is an island, Entire of itself. Each is a piece of the continent, A part of the main."
And if I think back to my time as a trustee of conservation charity the Woodland Trust, it absolutely mirrors how we think of biodiversity - 'it's an ecology, stupid!' Everything is inter-linked and ultimately inter-dependent.
I’ve spent quite a lot of my professional career in the cultural sector. Over the last 25 years a pattern of generous leadership has evolved and developed: with national institutions like Tate and the British Museum jointly curating and displaying their collections with regional museums, training and developing curators and conservators of the future. The National Theatre has pioneered co-productions with smaller production companies and regional houses and sees its own box office as a platform for other companies to benefit from. And we have co-funded Battersea Arts Centre's ‘The Agency’ partnership with People’s Palace Projects, based on a model founded in the favelas of Rio to support young people to make entrepreneurial ideas a reality.
Fundamentally, these cultural institutions developed a more acute awareness of their place in a delicate ecosystem. Civil society has no less rich and diverse an ecosystem (the NCVO Almanac is a useful reference point). ‘Generous’ leaders need to think clearly about what they have that they can share with others – be it money, time, or assets. And that shouldn’t be thought of as a simple act of altruism, but as an exercise in mutual benefit.
Take for example, the acquisition of Only Connect by Catch 22. The latter provides strategic support, scale and greater financial security, the former provides a new innovative arm of the business alongside skills and closeness to community. For this to work, the generous leader has to have a burning focus on mission rather than organisational preservation. This might mean supporting other organisations working with a similar mission to thrive rather than pursuing perpetual growth. Or it might mean offering space and time for an emerging leader from outside the organisation to reflect and develop their ideas, as the Catch22 Fellowship programme does. Generous leadership with a focus on mission may also lead a CEO and Board to decide that income growth is not always the path to achieving that mission - a decision EveryChild took under Anna Feuchtwang’s leadership.
Charlie Howard’s MAC-UK initiative goes even further – set up on a ten year basis with the intention of changing the nature of mental health provision for young people, before exiting stage left. And that points to a further characteristic of generous leadership, of being networked with other people working hard for social change. Rather than simply telling a single story, generous leaders seek to be a part of a wider movement and to share in that narrative instead. That’s a lesson that we funders need to particularly reflect on, having traditionally been criticised for thinking in terms of ‘our’ money and what it achieves, rather than the bigger picture for people and communities: sometimes attribution can get in the way of the best solution. The Early Action Funders Alliance is an example of positive steps in the right direction, bringing together a cluster of UK funders to explore and test ways of preventing problems from occurring rather than simply coping with the consequences.
And so we return to ‘nothing about us, without us, is for us’. As generous leaders, we must renew our championing of the grassroots, staying focused on our mission and how best we can facilitate the work of those we support – the people in the lead. We must be listeners and collaborators with our colleagues in the sector, recognising where and how we can add value. And, as generous leaders, we must welcome the opportunity to challenge our own assumptions of what good leadership looks like, and fully embrace the complexity that will provoke.
Tags:
challenges
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collaboration
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Posted By Clore Social Leadership,
09 September 2016
Updated: 07 December 2020
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Our Chief Executive Shaks Ghosh shares the personal lessons she learned from Mother Teresa’s leadership, following the humanitarian's recent cannonisation.
While Mother Teresa was doing her missionary work in Calcutta, I was a student at the city's Loreto Convent, the place where Mother Teresa started her leadership journey. It was a source of some amusement to us students - our politics and views about social action could not have been further from hers.
As young socialist students, we did not always appreciate her methods and devotion and often criticised her actions. We wished that she would do more to address the causes of suffering. We felt that simply offering love and dignity to the starving thousands was going to change nothing.
How wrong we were! The Mother did much to raise the issues of poverty globally; her advocacy for the poor, and her courageous admonishment of governments, the wealthy and the powerful have become legendary. She lived the life of the poor - to her dying day she shared a room with four other women. I now regret that as young politicos, we were so harsh in trivialising her preachings of love, humility and service.
Last week when she was being cannonised we heard about her doubts, her questions of her God and her faith. A salutary reminder that the road of meaningful leadership is paved with loneliness, sacrifice and self doubt. Mother Teresa was not always at peace.
My own mother served with Mother Teresa, working with children in her leprosy orphanage and raising funds for the houses where poor people of Calcutta still go to die. She met The Mother only once, and received one of her famous 'calling cards' which were what she called her business cards. Printed on the reverse were the powerful words, 'The fruit of love is service, and the fruit of service is peace'. RIP Mother Teresa.
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culture
peace
service
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Posted By Clore Social Leadership,
01 August 2016
Updated: 07 December 2020
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John Williams is Vice Chair at the Association of Chairs.
It’s been a tough 12 months for Chairs and trustees. The charity sector has faced unprecedented challenge and criticism, and much of it has focused on apparent failings in governance and leadership. Chairs especially are under pressure to ensure their boards are responsible and effective, while continuing to deliver the maximum impact for their beneficiaries.
The Association of Chairs (AoC) was set up three years ago to support charity and other non-profit Chairs, and to champion good governance and leadership in the sector. Chairs tell us they find their role rewarding, but a surprising number say that they find it more lonely, demanding and complex than they expected. Even those with the most stellar CVs and broad skills and experience can find themselves outside their comfort zone.
Yet it is clear to us that there is neither a consistent nor sufficient level of support offered to Chairs, and this has been starkly confirmed by our recent survey.
Using our substantial database, we researched 360 respondents in a chairing role, including 140 AoC members. We found high levels of commitment to the role - 54% of Chairs spend four days or more per month on their chairing role - but there are significant gaps in support.
Overall 46% of boards have no budget for board development; only 19% had a formal allocated budget, with the remainder addressing development on a case by case basis. Perhaps more surprisingly is that only 34% of Chairs had an induction, arguably the most basic form of support.
The main support Chairs received was access to publications, conferences and events, and administrative support. Apart from publications, fewer than 50% had accessed any kind of development support in the last 12 months, with many restricting themselves to free sources of support.
It’s clear that there is too little financial and practical support given to Chairs for induction, training and personal development. A host of commentators and reports have argued that we need to raise the bar on charity governance. This is not optional - good leadership is critical to ensure charities achieve the social impact they seek. Both our experience and this research suggests that the appetite to learn and develop is there, but we need to find new and imaginative ways to step up that support. We will all benefit from this.
You can download more information regarding the survey results on the Association’s website.
We welcome your comments in response to this article which you can submit beneath this article, or contact John via Twitter.
Tags:
chairs
challenges
change
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Posted By Clore Social Leadership,
15 June 2016
Updated: 07 December 2020
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It is common to hear that effective leadership requires conviction: acting in accordance and pursuit of one’s beliefs. I’m not sure this is right – at least not all the time. I think there is a lot to said for being a humble and courageous leader, grounded in evidence, rather than one driven solely by conviction.
The word ‘conviction’ is derived from the Latin convincere, from con- ‘with’ and vincere ‘conquer’. It implies that one’s mind is made up, and the job is to persuade or convince others.
Humility, on the other hand, implies that one does not know the answer. It suggests modesty and an acceptance that one’s own opinion or proposed course of action may not be the best.
A leader that embodies only conviction with no humility will likely polarise those they seek to lead and in some cases make poorly informed or biased decisions. On the other hand, a leader that embodies only humility probably won’t make any decisions at all.
So what is the way forward? I think it is humble and courageous leadership, with just a small dose of conviction where required. This means a starting point of intellectual curiosity, not a mind made up. It means adopting a scientist’s way of thinking in which one does not know the answer but is curious to find out. It means having the courage to question honestly one’s own convictions.
Evidence has a role. This may be drawing on the experiences of others that have gone before (and learning from it). Or it may involve going out to generate new data to test out ideas. The trick is to be genuinely humble and not do what many leaders (and politicians) do in cherry-picking evidence to support one’s own pre-existing conviction.
Sometimes evidence can point to a clear way forwards. Happy days. Often it is not so straight-forward - which leads us to courage.
Adopting a starting point of humility and engagement with evidence can surface some challenging scenarios. Probably the most likely scenario is that evidence does not point to a clear-cut way forward. Evidence may be sparse or it may be contradictory. This requires skill and courage to navigate uncertain waters. It is times like this when that dose of conviction is useful, tempered with a little humility.
Or sometimes evidence can challenge preconceived notions or convictions. It takes a braver leader to change course in light of new evidence than one that belligerently sticks to their guns.
You can share your views with Tim directly on Twitter via @tim_data_hobbs or post your comments below.
Tags:
change
conviction
courage
humble
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