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Posted By Clore Social Leadership,
27 June 2017
Updated: 07 December 2020
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David Green is director of Green Pepper Consulting, a social enterprise working with the third sector.
In the corporate world, ethics and success are not always synonymous. If they were, then we wouldn’t have activists such as Naomi Klein, or organisations like Greenpeace. But it isn’t just big oil or multinational mining companies that should be concerned with ethics.
Indeed, I recall the furore in 2013 when Comic Relief were found, at the time, to be investing in the likes of tobacco and armaments.
The fact remains that with a constant pressure to deliver, it can be tempting to push ethics aside. The outcome, it seems, then becomes more important than the means.
But does this actually matter if the result is the same?
The only ethical response, surely, is “yes it does”. It matters because no organisation operates outside of society. Indeed, for the voluntary and community sector (VCS), creating a better society is very much central to the role. So accounting for how you do this is important; and the reasons why should be clear:
- Greater public trust and confidence
- Credibility with local communities and the sector
- Better governance
- Inspiring loyalty, motivation, and the engagement of staff and volunteers
- More attractive to funders, donors and social partners
Of course the vast majority of VCS organisations spend their money with care; and e. But a wise VCS leader will want to embed ethics into the organisation’s culture at every level, from trustees, staff and volunteers, to its relations with beneficiaries, funders and other stakeholders.
This means not only putting the organisation’s values and mission centre stage, but also incorporating ethics into the leader’s own role.
A good place to start is with effective communications, consulting with staff and volunteers, engaging in external networks, and taking time to explain the organisation’s message, both internally and externally.
It also means adopting good and effective systems. Ethics should be embedded into recruitment, relationships, and practices. Creating an inclusive climate for staff, volunteers and beneficiaries to thrive, to speak up, and to develop will not only build trust and reinforce the organisation’s values, but help ensure sustainability in the longer term.
The leader’s personal behaviour must also reflect the organisation’s ethical values. Shouting and bullying, setting unrealistic targets, keeping people in the dark – none of these are compatible with ethical leadership. Instead empathy, honesty and respect should prevail.
Underpinning all of this should be basic principles of trust, honesty and integrity. As such, a commitment to model individual behaviour on the Nolan principles on standards in public life seems appropriate.
Clearly none of this is new, or particularly difficult to achieve. But it can be forgotten. So leaders should remind themselves, particularly when tough times need bold decisions, that how they get results is just as important to everyone involved, as the results themselves.
Please share your comments about this blog below, or you can join the conversation with David on Twitter.
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Posted By Clore Social Leadership,
26 June 2017
Updated: 07 December 2020
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This blog introduces Athol Halle's full provocation piece which he developed as part of his Clore Social Leadership 2016 Fellowship.
Are we in denial about homelessness? The facts are out there - homelessness kills you. The average of death of a rough sleeper in England is 47, with one person dying whilst sleeping on the streets of London every two weeks.
Homelessness is growing. The number of people sleeping on our streets more than doubling since 2010.
Services are shrinking. Despite the rise in rough sleeping, there has been 20% reduction in the number of homeless hostel beds since 2010.
A lack of empathy – do we have a Personality Disorder? As a society, we know of the serious harms that homelessness causes to people, and yet we lack compassion and allow it to grow, before our eyes, under our feet. ‘An impairment in empathy: lack of concern for feelings, needs, or suffering of others.’ This diagnostic criteria for a personality disorder fits us well.
We waste our precious resources – is this self-harm? People are society’s most precious resource. Take Jimmy Carlson, whose Memorial Service was recently held at St Martins-in-the-Fields in Trafalgar Square. Jimmy spent over 20 years as homeless. He then spent the next 20 years as an inspirational advocate for the rights of homeless people, contributing to national policy, setting up client involvement groups and creating social clubs for people in recovery from alcohol and drug problems. On receiving his OBE in 2012 Jimmy said 'You would have walked over me in the street 15 years ago and thought I was a lost cause, just another drunk. However, I picked myself up and turned my life around and I have gone on to make a decent contribution to my community. Rough sleepers you see on the street today – with the right support they have a lot to offer too. Never give up on anyone.'
When we allow people to rot away on the margins of society, we all suffer from the lack of contribution people have to offer. A 2012 government study estimated up to £1 billion was spent as a result of homelessness across all government departments. We waste our money on dealing with the consequences rather than addressing the causes of homelessness. ‘Deliberate injury to oneself, typically as a manifestation of a psychological or psychiatric disorder.’ This dictionary definition for ‘Self-Harm’ fits us well.
There is a complex relationship between homelessness and mental health, on an individual level, both cause and consequence. Heriot Watt University’s in-depth research showed that for the majority of people, mental health problems preceded homelessness; whilst the experience of homelessness is clearly damaging - Homeless Link show that 80% of people in homelessness services had some form of mental health issue, diagnosed or undiagnosed. However, the stark truth is that if you are homeless you are nine times more likely to commit suicide than the general population.
Denial? Lack of empathy? Self-harm? As a society, when it comes to homelessness, we have a mental health problem. Acknowledging we have a problem is the first step to solving it.
Athol Hallé is Chief Executive of Groundswell - this piece is also published on their website.
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Posted By Clore Social Leadership,
12 April 2017
Updated: 07 December 2020
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In the last blog, Born leaders – you need to regress to progress, I explored the quality of curiosity and how we could benefit from learning to value this quality as we face increased leadership challenges in our sector. Now, I'd like to think about another child-like quality: courage.
When I was nine years old, my brother and salvaged four large pram wheels from the local tip. I was so excited – after what felt like months of searching we had finally found the only missing elements to our home-made go kart.
We fixed the axles to the old wooden door, secured an old blue rope as a steering device to the front axle and headed for the hill. The hill was notorious, it’s where anybody who was anybody went when it snowed. They took it on with bin lids, dinner trays, rubber rings, and the occasional sledge. But this was the height of the summer holidays, so we were going to set a new standard of bravery by tackling the hill on a homemade go kart. When we got back at school, we'd be heroes! I sat at the top of the hill, gripping the steering rope so tight it was sore. Wearing nothing more than my shell suit to protect me, I gave the nod to my brother to push me over the precipice. My heart was racing so fast, like it knew something that I didn’t…
I’m told that I made it to the bottom; I don’t remember it as well my brother. The last I recall he was shouting at me to use the soles of my plimsolls as brakes. Ah yes, brakes! Perhaps the pram wheels weren’t the only thing missing…
This might not be the most inspiring story to demonstrate my point but thinking back, I can't help but be a bit envious of my own courage. Coming on for thirty years later I wouldn’t dream of returning to the hill with a homemade Go Kart. I have learned to be cautious, to assess risk and make informed decisions based on the information that’s available to me.
Have I become too cautious? Does this same risk assessment prevent me from being brave, from speaking my truth in situations where I may be a lone voice, and from making unpopular decisions even though I know with confidence that they’re the right decision for the organisation?
In trying to find an example of where I have demonstrated courage recently, I asked some of my colleagues for examples of where I have led with courage. This feedback revealed the big differences that I have effected as a result of being willing to take appropriate risks, to challenge the status quo, and to make tough decisions. The feedback also revealed that courage manifests in small moments, like in being more open and vulnerable with my colleagues.
As our sector faces increasing challenges, both in number and complexity, it’s vital that we lead with the courage of our childhood, and true to our authentic selves.
In the next blog I’ll explore the quality of authenticity and how being true to our real self can enable us to be more courageous.
This blog was developed as part of Mark's 2016 Clore Social Fellowship Programme and originally published on Third Force News as part of a blog series.
Mark Kelvin is programme director at the Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland and a 2016 Clore Social Fellow.
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Posted By Clore Social Leadership,
12 April 2017
Updated: 07 December 2020
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It’s not every morning you get to facilitate a conversation with someone who sparks a marmite reaction across the social sector, so when Shaks Ghosh, CEO of Clore Social Leadership asked me to facilitate a breakfast leadership conversation with Toby Young, I jumped at the chance.
The Leaders Now events series is run in partnership by Clore Social Leadership and the House of St Barnabas. It brings together great speakers and leaders from the social sector to inspire, encourage debate and new thinking, and to provide an opportunity to network and meet other leaders.
April’s session featured a conversation with Toby Young, the journalist activist and reluctant leader of the free schools movement. However, he is so much more than that; an accomplished social commentator, journalist at the Spectator, former CEO of the West London Free School Trust, Brexiteer, published author, food judge, cyclist, father of four, keen QPR supporter, and the man most likely to polarise debate about education, freedom of choice, self-determination and the class system.
The night before the conversation, Radio 4 broadcasted Toby’s most recent programme, The Rise and Fall of the Meritocracy, where Toby asked whether his father, Michael Young’s dark prophesy is correct, if your genes determine your future, and whether the Brexit and Trump votes signal the death knell for the popular political vision of a modern meritocracy.
Suffice to say, as a former Director at the Young Foundation, the programme sparked a heated debate (aka row) in my household and I confess I carried this apprehension into the House of St Barnabas. With 40 people in the room from a variety of sectors including education, local government, heritage and more, Toby led us through in what I might call his reluctant leadership journey; from the denizens of NYC to having 150 people standing in his living room wanting to set up a school.
Obviously what goes on on tour, stays on tour but I do have permission to share Toby’s 9 tips for leadership which I surmised from his talk:
- Admit when you are wrong
- Look confident while doing it
- Remain steadfast in purpose as it will steer your course
- Build a thick skin
- Having a strong moral purpose will help you get the best of people
- Being engaged in a common venture with like minded people gives meaning to life in a way money and status does not
- Co-opt the tools that work regardless of where the come from.
- Sometimes being belligerent in bunker needs to happen to get you through tough times but don’t stay there too long
- Collaborative decision making is miles better than individual decision making
When I read them back to him, Toby said, ‘when I hear them like that, it’s bleedin’ obvious really - I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to realise them.’
For me, Toby reflected a style of leadership I often see in movements - activists that have started with a passionate belief around fixing a perceived injustice who have realised that to go far, it helps to go with others. No one ever said that social change was a quick fix and Toby Young I think, would be the first to admit that.
Share your views below, or join the conversation on Twitter.
Esther Foreman is the CEO of the The Social Change Agency, connect with her on Twitter.
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Posted By Clore Social Leadership,
13 March 2017
Updated: 07 December 2020
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Jo Youle is the CEO of Missing People, a charity that offers a lifeline to the 250,000 people who run away and go missing each year in the UK.
I don’t like making mistakes. I don’t think many of us do. I don’t like getting things wrong since I’m the sort of person who works hard to get things right. I’m pre-programmed to think round corners, to not let the wool be pulled over my eyes.
But it could be worse. What if I make a mistake and don’t even realise I’m making it until it’s too late? What if we take our thinking, our organisations and other people’s lives off down the wrong road, and realise too late we’re in a cul-de-sac with no fuel to get us back on the right road?
Not so long ago, I made this kind of mistake. I just got the wrong idea in my head and blithely followed myself, down the wrong road.
A close friend’s mum died. I moved heaven and earth to be there for the funeral. I did a ‘belt and braces’ check on the address and was reassured it was the only crematorium in town. I arrived well over an hour early; checked with the guy working in the graveyard that I was in the right place.
I started to feel uneasy about 1pm, when the service was due to start in 15 minutes and no one had turned up. That guy I’d first spoken to asked, 'anything I can help with?' I told him what I was waiting for and he said, 'Oh, you want the crematorium, ‘love’, 10 miles from here, this is the cemetery'.
I did a slow motion fall apart; 10 miles from where I needed to be it was game over. I cried. Gutted that I wouldn’t be there for my friend. I had sort of known way before, that something wasn’t right. I hadn’t listened to my instinct. I’d simply got the wrong ‘idea’ in my head and everything I did, googled, and saw from that moment forward merely confirmed to me I was in the right place. A bad case of confirmation bias.
It’s a pervasive thing, this confirmation bias. And all the more annoying since I’ve been ‘on the watch’ for it since being warned about this for newbie, and oldie CEO’s. We all know about huge companies slowly leading themselves to disaster by distorted realities, and this, even when all the data and information suggested a different picture and a different road to take. Take the now stereotypical examples: Xerox, Kodak, Blackberry.
Think on the sad demise of Kids Company. I’ll always remember visiting one of their vibrant, happily noisy centres in north London. A piano lesson underway on the Coldplay-donated piano in reception, counselling rooms, play areas, needlework. Creativity, friendship and care everywhere, providing the sort of environment many lucky children expect and have at home. This, a charity where income climbed from £2m to £23m over 10 years, before it came publically crashing down, in 2015.
The signs must have been there for a long time. The numbers must have painted a picture. There must have been warning signs. Perhaps they were obscured by hopefulness, optimism, and a divine sense of purposefulness. Perhaps a successful history was being used to predict a successful future. The post-collapse parliamentary investigation concluded that the charity had been run according to 'wishful thinking'.
Another (nameless) charity was saved from the brink only by a newcomer. From someone not invested in the ‘story’ or the people of the charity. For ten years the charity had not changed anything in finance. The team were well respected and friendly. They quietly got on with their work, undisturbed. The treasurer and the senior finance bod got on well. The reserves pot was healthy.
The newbie CEO saw a different picture. A financial strategy that would mean doom. A picture the treasurer couldn’t see even when it was painted in front of them; a human being simply not wanting to believe difficult truths about people and the organisation they cared about so much.
But new people aren’t always the answer either. A familiar story? Recruiting someone on a strong belief bolstered by a long recruitment process, that they are a good and competent egg. And from that point on, every piece of work, every behaviour, feeds this same belief. The ‘good egg peg’. And all this despite evidence to the contrary. Yes, you might hear or see some negatives. You might listen to (but not hear) some politely shared concerns from others. But surely your own instincts, your years of experience count for something.
There might be a slow dawning and then the consequences. A slowness to respond. A team disheartened, and worried. Time lost. Trust gone. There were some important lessons to learn. Not least, how quickly a team can disintegrate with a less than competent egg at the helm and the importance of not believing yourself too much.
We create worlds for ourselves that confirm our own thinking and beliefs. Our own, personalised echo chambers. We select newsfeeds, watch the ‘bits’ we like on catch up TV. We select ‘our sort of people’ to follow whilst Facebook selects stuff for us - algorithmed around our web browsing. And as for Twitter, we make it so bespoke I’m sure most people could be psychologically profiled purely on those people they choose to follow.
Setting off with the wrong hypotheses can have the most serious consequences. Avid followers of miscarriage of justice programmes: podcasts Serial and Undisclosed and Netflix hit Making A Murderer will have learned about injustice when a (wrong) hypothesis rules in evidence when it supports the theory, and out when it doesn’t. It can be devastatingly life changing.
Reflect on this observed phenomenon. Student sailors under pressure. Entering a harbour or approaching a coastline for the first time, in the dark. Trying to correctly identify the flashing patterns of different colours lights, all flashing a different number of times and lengths to guide them safely home. The small matter of avoiding rocks, running aground or sinking. Convinced they ‘know’ where they are, and then persuading themselves, that a light clearly flashing 5 times, was flashing in fact flashing 6. Even finding excuses about why the rest of the 'picture' and the many other lights weren’t right.
Why do we do it? In my case turning up at the wrong place for a funeral. A mixture of emotion on a sad occasion. Over confidence in myself. A tad smug as someone who travels. Being on my own. I’ll never mix up cemetery and crematorium again, that much I know. I’ll go back to trusting instinct a little more, and the sat nav a little less.
Maybe it is a gift to be less confident. To be more open to challenge. More open to changing your mind. Or your perspective. Think of the childhood experience of a little girl in the back of the car, hearing her mum crying, her dad silent. Her belief for years that she’d done something very bad, and only decades later jolted when your older brother says, ‘do you remember us in the back of the car the day JFK was shot?’
I’m going to do my best to avoid cul-de-sacs. I’m going to try to lose my more opinionated self. I’m going to be particularly alert when I want something to be true, particularly as someone who cares so much for the charity I lead and the people we help. Less of the ‘I believe’ and more 'scientific integrity’. A phrase coined by Richard Feynman denoting ‘the willingness to bend over backward to examine reasons your pet theories about the world might be wrong’ (Julia Galef, Slate).
Please share your comments and views about this blog below, or you can contact Jo on Twitter.
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