And I am often tempted as I am now to share these two perspectives and stop there, because I really do think that fundamentally there is nothing else to say. But I never do, because there is much to say about leadership. In fact, once you start thinking about what you might reflect on the challenge is what to cut, there is an almost infinite range of subjects we could cover.

First, whilst I don’t think we should define civil society by its relationship to the state, I do think that if the government can direct investment to an unparalleled degree and make laws, then if we get up every morning aiming to change the world, we do need to think carefully about our relationship with the state. And it’s a tricky one right now, I think. In the nineties and noughties, in a time of economic plenty and a sympathetic government with big majorities, a fairly typical theory of change for many charities was: grow through public service delivery and deliver these services better than the state; and use rational argumentation and insider tracks (through good relationships with civil servants and junior ministers) to effect policy change.

Now both these flushes feel busted - austerity doesn’t feel like it’s over, few charities are growing, and many are at the end of a decade of grinding budget rounds. Meanwhile Brexit has, of course, eclipsed social policy and, looking beyond Brexit (however it is ‘done’), neither a populist right nor statist left seem terribly interested in our sector.

Second, our sector feels to me quite inward looking at the moment. For understandable reasons, we’re beset with institutional pre-occupations, concerns about safeguarding, workplace culture, senior salaries, fundraising practice - many, especially more established charities, contending with massive technical debt, historic wrongs, pension deficits. It’s emphatically not a criticism to observe that most leaders are spending most of their time looking into their organisations. But it is a real challenge right now, and one we all need to meet, to find the space and energy and creativity, to look up and look out, to connect and keep connecting with people and ideas well beyond our immediate orbit.

"It’s emphatically not a criticism to observe that most leaders are spending most of their time looking into their organisations."

The second thing I wanted to address is something about this cartoon, because I think it contains an awful lot - or more specifically, three interrelated ideas about leadership. Namely that:

Leadership is a fundamentally collective and communal act. It isn’t about autonomous individuals.

An awful lot of good leadership isn’t about what is immediately visible, nor about the big and the heroic final act, but rather centred upon the quiet and the daily and all the ground-work that goes into building great things.

That no leader knows where their influence ends - the effect of your leadership is incalculably diffusive. It travels further and influences more than you can possibly imagine.

We are used, I think, to framing leadership as the work of individuals. Our narratives are cast by reference to individual leaders. Yet I wonder if we can be too ready to keep our conception of leadership as an individual act. We hear a lot about authentic leadership just now, which I absolutely think is a good thing. Yet I also wonder whether inadvertently the grail of authenticity, coupled with the call for leaders to show some personal vulnerability, and our desire to know our leaders on more human terms, can lead us to focus too much on individual personalities at the expense of exploring the collective ideas and endeavours of leadership. Indeed, I was asked to share something of my story. On Clore Social’s Emerging Leader Programme, you have done much work these past six months on your self-awareness and develop your personal learning journey, all the while, I hope, encouraged to practice self-care.

None of this is bad, please don’t misunderstand me. We all need to work from the inside out. And authenticity, self-awareness, self-care are all good things. It’s just that I think great leadership also pays homage to some older-fashioned ideas too - ideas of service and duty and selflessness, that perhaps we hear and read less about.

Because the collective is in some ways counter cultural and here I am very grateful to the ideas of a brilliant coach and thinker with whom I have had the privilege of working, called Douglas Board (@BoardWryter). Douglas notes, and I quote, that from the moment we step into our first places of learning, we are asked to write down and call out our own names. We get report cards telling us what we have accomplished on our own. Later when we submit longer pieces of writing, we have to sign our solemn promise that this is all my own work. This is absurd. Nothing is all our own work – how can it possibly be? We are inextricably linked - all part of a shared space and culture and it is in this reality that we lead.

"From the moment we step into our first places of learning, we are asked to write down and call out our own names." Douglas Board